USA

John Graham Jr. was born in 1908 in Seattle, and must have admired his father very much, because he followed his father's footsteps and became an architect. His father was a famed architect who designed many of the buildings in Seattle. After graduating from Yale in 1931, John Graham the Junior developed quite a career designing shopping malls across America. In 1961, he was hired to design a mall in Honolulu called the Ala Moana Shopping Center. Looking around, he said to himself, "gosh, there is a nice view in every direction. Wouldn't it be great if someone eating at the restaurant could get all these views, instead of just one view." He then put on his favorite record of 1961, "Tossin' and Turnin'" by Bobby Lewis and watched as the record revolved around and around at 45 rpm, and it suddenly hit him. "THE RESTAURANT SHOULD REVOLVE!"

The next year, he returned home to Seattle, where they were just starting to build their Space Needle for the 1962 World Fair. Looking at Puget Sound and the Olympic Mountains to the west, the Cascade range to the East, Lake Union to the north and Mount Rainier to the south, he thought to himself, "I could save a lot of work if I just reuse that tacky revolving restaurant design I used in Honolulu last year..." And thus was born The Eye of the Needle, billed as the world's first revolving restaurant (despite the fact that La Ronde in Honolulu, designed by the same architect, was already spinning in the South Pacific).

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As a relatively seasoned traveller, I like to think that I am beyond the point to be wowed by tourist sites. I've seen Niagara Falls too many times to even be thrilled by it. I've been up the Eiffel Tower, but how can that compare to sitting around in a cafe on a side street in Paris. I'm there to experience the "real" place, not the place where one is most likely to run into other tourists.

Thus, I could (and did) easily cast aside the experience of being atop the Space Needle in one of my past entries on Seattle. It was touristy and crowded and not really that indicative of the place that I was visiting. It was not a place, much like Toronto's CN Tower, that locals bother visiting.

Upon booking a reservation for four at the Sky City restaurant, the new name of the revolving restaurant atop the Space Needle, I was prepared to be underwhelmed.

Every so often in one's experiences, though, one is taken aback by the joy of an experience that one would think they would just detest. An example of this was a trip I made to Vancouver back in 2002, when my friend said, "I've rented a stretch limo for us to cruise around in tonight!"

(An aside - Sarabeth and Kathryn - I swear, I am going to mention you in my blog very, very soon. Just stick through this one small story, and you'll be featured prominently).

Now, I'd been in a limo before, back when I was a teen-ager and underage drinker and heading to prom. But frankly, as a 34 year old I was pretty sure I was beyond the point of being impressed by a limo, and was pretty sure I would just be rolling my eyes and sighing all night.

But a strange thing happened as we cruised around in our stretch limo, listening to banging rock and roll music and drinking imported beers. I started to really enjoy it. What I thought would be a tacky and embarrassing experience became something that was absolutely and totally fun.

And thus it was at Sky City on Wednesday night, revolving around at 1 revolution per 47 minutes looking out at Seattle at night, eating very pricey seafood and drinking very pricey beer and having an absolutely fantastic time.

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Myself, and three co-workers, Trebor, Sarabeth and Kathryn had booked a 6:15 reservation at the revolving restaurant. I wasn't expecting too much. But soon we were having a good time, laughing and enjoying appetizers. And then the first card appeared.

Kathryn and Sarabeth, the coolest people on the planet enjoying the coolest dessert on the planet.

The Sky City restaurant revolves, but the windows stay still, and so any item left on the window still will soon recede from you and start approaching your fellow dinners. As we sat there, a card appeared on the window sill.

"My name is Laura, and I am from San Francisco. Where are you from?" We grabbed the card, and quickly wrote down our information.

Sarabeth - Washington, DC
Kathryn - Louisville, Kentucky
Trebor - Princeton, NJ
Greg - Toronto, Canada

More cards followed - "What's your favorite song?" "What is your favorite animal?" "What's the best advice you've ever received?" (the answer to that was "you don't want to date me, I'll just end up hurting you." Unfortunately, I didn't listen. But it was really, excellent advice.). All the cards were written by children, and all were obviously having a great time.

Dinner was very good (though the price was quite high - YIKES), but the key item was dessert. The signature item of Sky City, dating back to the days of the 1962 world fair, is the Lunar Orbiter, a hot fudge sundae presented in swirls of dry-ice Seattle "fog."

And so I found myself quite enjoying what I felt I shouldn't have. It's not hte first time that's occurred recently - the same thing happened during my "all-inclusive vacation" in Panama. Perhaps I'm growing, learning to accept more and be less judgemental of experiences.

But then again, perhaps I'm just getting old and searching for better ways to justify my desires for comfort.

Hmmm...

The two drunks were sitting across the aisle and one row behind me on the flight were getting louder, and I was starting to question the wisdom of the flight attendants who had served them the double jack and Cokes (with not much in the way of Coke). I’m not positive that trying to reason or argue with drunk people is a very good idea, so I just looked out the window and tried to ignore the constant stream of swear words. However, another passenger decided to take a different approach, and the man sitting two rows behind me finally told them to be quiet.

“Why don’t you come over here and shut me up,” one of the drunks asked, his tone suddenly nasty. “Now, why don’t you shut up and f**k off.”

This was not going to be the best flight I’d been on.

• * *

I take a lot of flights, but usually take them at very specific times to very specific places. The Monday morning and Thursday night flights are mostly full of people travelling on business, and most often pretty frequent flyers. Add to that the locations that I am flying - Newark, Seattle, San Francisco or Atlanta are large metropolitan areas with lots of business going on. On those early Monday or late Thursday flights, you pretty much get a plane full of people who have done this before, do it regularly, know what to do and aren't likely to be taking much joy in the process of travelling from point A to point B.

Occasionally, though, I fly on days other than Monday and Thursday or to locations that are more known as tourist destinations rather than places to work. Such a flight was my Wednesday night flight from Seattle to Reno. I was going down to Reno to spend a few days working, but there was a large subset of the plane that was going down to Reno for fun. Reno is the second or third largest city in Nevada (depending on whose stats you use), and in addition to the obvious draw of Nevada's legalized gambling and sports betting, the self-proclaimed "Biggest Little City In the World" is also only 35 km from Lake Tahoe and some amazing Nevada and California skiing.

Given those draws, the better portion of my mostly empty Alaska Air flight was filled with kids going skiing and grandparents going gambling, and to be expected of those going on vacation, they were already starting their good times with a few drinks at the bar.

As has become almost expected as of late, our departure time came and went, and we soon learned that we would be delayed 2 hours, meaning we would not land in Reno until 12:30 in the morning. I, having a full day of work ahead of me on Thursday, took the time to read quietly and do mental calculations in my head of how much sleep I was going to get. Some of those going on vacation, though, took the opportunity to imbibe even more alcohol.

Finally we boarded our flight, and I took my seat in an empty row near the front of the plane. In the row ahead of me sat a man who was dressed in clothes that immediately made me think protestant minister, and I assumed that he was going to Reno something more akin to work rather than the sinful pleasures of gambling. Across the aisle from him were two youngish (i.e. my age, so we'll call them youngish) men who were happy and loud, obviously mostly drunk and loud enough that the entire plane soon knew that they were from Victoria, Canada, they had been delayed 7 times today in trying to get to Reno, they passed the time of their delays by drinking, and their plans were to gamble tonight and ski tomorrow.

A few rows back a man boarded with a wild beard and hair down to the small of his back. He stumbled to his seat with bloodshot eyes, and collapsed into his seat in a bit of a heap. This amused the youngish Victorians to no end, and soon enough the more rambunctious of the two had moved to sit down beside the wild man with his wild hair. As the flight progressed, and the two drank more and more double rum and cokes (easy on the coke), they got louder and louder, more foul with their language and nastier with their tone.

Now, I'm pretty thick skinned and have no expectations of comfort on flights, so I did my best to ignore the two and read my book. Some of the other passengers didn't take the disturbance in stride though, and soon there was a few heated exchanges between cranky, sober passengers telling the drunkards to shut up, and the drunkards, cursing the sober passengers, laughing manically, and then trying to make friendly conversation with their tormenters, which just seemed to irk people even more.

There was one exchange between the drunken Victorian and a man who I can only describe as looking like Willy Nelson, if Willy Nelson had his nose chewed off by a mountain lion. He looked like the kind of guy that you wouldn't want to mess with, the kind of guy who lived in the mountains and wrestled bears for fun. But the drunken Victorian, who looked a lot like a guy who worked in an office - not exactly in fighting shape, certainly not to take on a wild, frontier man - was not deterred.

Finally, the protestant minister look-a-like sitting in front of me rang his call button, and whispered something to the flight attendant when she came by. We landed, and things were heating up in the cabin between the drunken Victorian and Willy Nelson, when the captain came on asked everyone to take their seats as security was boarding the plane.

Two Reno airport cops boarded the plane, and the protestant minister look-a-like pointed at the wild haired guy with the bloodshot eyes, the drunken Victorian who had been talking smack to Willy Nelson, and his rather surprised friend, who admittedly was a little loud before the flight took off, but had been pretty quiet most of the flight. The more drunk of the Victorians cursed, and the cop, putting on his best "respect my authority" look, told the Victorian he'd better, "watch his language, son," which was especially funny to me because the cop and the drunk were about the same age, though I didn't laugh. Laughing didn't strike me as an especially bright thing to do in the tense atmosphere of the plane.

The cops escorted the men off the plane, the one quieter Victorian looking somewhat dumbfounded and sheepish, but the other two (the wild man and Willy Nelson's tormenter) looking defiant, which I chalked up to either complete drunken ignorance or some sort of misguided stand against the man. Either way, I didn't figure that the Victorians would be doing much gambling tonight.

I, it being almost 1 in the morning, wasn't interested in doing much gambling either. I just wanted to get to my hotel and fall into a comfy bed and sleep. Sometimes the most taxing thing about travelling is the fact that you sometimes have to share a tight space with other people...

When we last left our intrepid hero (that’s me, by the way), I had just jetted my way back to Toronto from my fancy-pants vacation in Panama. After a short stint back in New Jersey to finish up my last project, I was loaded on a plane and headed all the way cross-country to land in Seattle, Washington. I’ve been up in Seattle for about a month now.

Seattle, Washington is a city of approximately 600,000 people sandwiched between the salt water of Puget Sound and the fresh water of Lake Washington. To the north is the Canadian province of British Columbia. To the west are the Olympic Mountains, to the east the Cascade Range including just off to the south-east is Mount Rainier, the highest peak in the Cascades, and easily visible on a clear day from Seattle.

Generally, I like my blogs to tell a little story, to have a beginning, a middle and an end. However, I’ve been pretty heads-down this past month on my project, and so my chances to get out and see Seattle have been sporadic. So instead of my usual story, I present just random snapshots of Seattle.

Seattle’s most famous landmark is probably the Space Needle. In 1962 Seattle hosted the world fair, and decided on a theme of Century 21, and wanted something futurist to be the visual anchor point for the fair grounds. Inspired by the Stuttgart TV tower in Germany, the architects decided on a tower, eventually topping the tower with a flying saucer to represent the Jetson-esque world that would await us in the year 2000. The fair also brought Seattle that 1960s favorite representation of “the future,” a MONORAIL.

Today, the Space Needle serves as a tourist attraction for Seattle, like many other towers around the world. Rubes like me line up to spend $14.00 to go up to the top, look around for 10 minutes, yawn and go back down. The Space Needle, at 605 feet, isn’t even the tallest structure in Seattle anymore. That honour belongs to the Columbia Center, a downtown office complex rising 967 feet into the air.

The same day I went to the Space Needle I had planned to go to the Music Experience Project, an interactive museum dedicated to all things musical, fitting for a city that brought us both Jimi Hendrix and Kurt Cobain. However, it was a beautifully sunny day, so instead I choose to skip the indoor museum and spend my time walking down along the waterfront. Seattle has a number of piers jutting out into Elliot Bay, originally built to handle Pacific sea traffic, most of the piers now house tourist attractions or cruise ships. Seattle still is the 9th busiest port in the USA, though the majority of the cargo traffic is handled away from the downtown core nowadays.

Seattle and the surrounding area does have the largest ferry system in the USA, and third largest in the world, moving more than 11 million vehicles around Washington state per year.

South of Downtown are two stadiums – Qwest Field, where the Seattle Seahawks for the NFL play, and Safeco Field, where the Seattle Mariners of Major League Baseball play. One of the star players on the Mariners is Ichiro Suzuki, a Japanese import. When I was in Japan this last summer, the only two American sports teams that most Japanese would know were the New York Yankees and the Seattle Mariners, and the games of these two teams would often be on the television so the Japanese could see how their countrymen were doing playing in America.

Even though farther north than my hometown of Toronto, Seattle has exceptionally mild winters. Just beside the ball park is the Pyramid Brew House, one of Seattle’s many “micro-brews.” People in the Pacific Northwest seem to love their beer, and there are a number of fine micro-brews out there to enjoy. Pyramid is most famous for it’s Hefeweizen, an unfiltered wheat beer usually served with a lemon, but I can attest that the Apricot Weizen is also quite excellent.

I was smart to take my walk along the waterfront when I did, for Seattle was back to it’s usual weather the following day, cloudy and drizzling. Seattle has a reputation for being a rainy place, but that’s only half right. It has only really rained a couple of time in my month in Seattle, but most days are gray with a light mist of hovering in the air, not really raining, but not dry either. And on those cold, drizzling days it becomes clear why beer, while very popular, is not Seattle’s most popular beverage. That honour goes to coffee. Seattle is the original home of the world conquering juggernaut whose green and white signs appear everywhere from Beijing to Boston and from Cairo to Korea – Starbucks. The original Starbucks is still open, and serves as both a tourist attraction and a coffee stand. The original logo of a bare-breasted mermaid on a brown background has morphed over the years to the more bible-belt acceptable green logo without breast or belly button in sight, but you can still see the logo proudly displayed in the original store.

The original Starbucks is across from Pike Place Market, a 9 acre public market in operation since 1907, selling everything from produce to tourist kitsch. The most popular attraction in Pike Place Market, however, is the Pike Place Fish Market. The fishmongers at the Pike Place Fish Market don’t hand each other fish, they toss them full force at each other. The Pike Place Fish Market has been featured on many TV shows, and you are bound to see them on any TV show featuring Seattle tossing fish out into the crowds.

Starbucks is just one of many companies to get their start in Seattle. Another was REI (Recreational Equipment Inc.), a co-operative that sells outdoor equipment. I love places like REI and the Canadian equivalent, Mountain Equipment Co-op. Besides of being a great place to get travel gear like hiking shoes, backpacks and quick dry t-shirts, underwear and socks, it also makes me feel like I’m a lot more outdoorsy and sporty than I really am. I mean, it’s cool shopping with people who are buying kayaks and carabiners. REI’s flagship store is located just a block from my hotel, built of glass, wood and steel, the store includes a climbing wall, bike test trail and a number of clocks listing the time at various mountains around the world, including my nemesis – Kilimanjaro.

I was in Seattle on February 4th of this year, which was the day that Superbowl forty-one was played in Miami. Those who are regular readers know that I had a bit of a “thing” with this “Superbowls around the world” the past 6 years, when I have watched the Superbowl (or at least attempted to watch) in 6 different cities in 5 different countries on 3 different continents. And usually I would have posted a whole entry around the Superbowl, but frankly it’s getting a little tired, this gimmick, especially seeing as for the 2nd year in the row I watched the Superbowl in the USA (though it was on different coasts). So instead I’ll just cram it in this entry, and leave it at that.

I watched Superbowl forty-one in the Fox Sports Grill on 6th. Generally A nice sports bar, there is only one story worth telling.

I arrived too late to get a seat to watch the game, so instead I stood by the bar. I was joined by a coworker of mine, Alex. At one point, the man sitting at the bar right in front of us got up and went to the washroom, leaving his half empty glass of light American beer in front of his chair to hold his place.

As my and Alex’s glasses were empty and there was a space at the bar, I took this as a good opportunity to get another round of drinks. I placed my order, the bartender returned with the two glasses and I paid her. While the bartender went to get my change, I turned around and gave Alex his drink, leaving mine on the bar. As I was handing Alex his drink, the man who had been sitting at the bar returned to his seat. He sat down, and as I turned around I saw him pick up my full glass of dark IPA (which looked nothing like his light, golden beer) and take a big chug.

I was stunned. I had no idea what to do. The bartender returned with my change, and I stammered out, “that man just drank my beer.”

The man turned around, looked at me with unfocusing eyes and said, “hey, it’s my seat. I saw a beer there, I drank it.” He stared at me for a moment as I stood dumbfounded. Finally he turned around, picked up his half-full glass of beer, and started drinking that.

The bartender chuckled, and poured me another beer, and gave my now sullied beer to the drunken beer stealer. I guess what else was she going to do with it?

As is always the case, that night hours after I had left the bar and was already back in my hotel room in bed, I came up with the perfect comeback line to have said to the drunken beer stealer. “You might want to wander down to the clinic on Monday and get tested. While it’s pretty rare for someone to catch leprosy from sharing a drink, it’s been known to happen.”

Oh well, if it ever happens to me again, I’ll have the line already prepared.

It is almost the end of the year, so I will say a Merry Christmas (or whatever other holiday you might be celebrating at this time of year) and a happy new year to all you.

Here's some images to get you in the mood.

Christmas Tree on the side of Macy's, 34th Street, NYC, USA

Tavern on the Green, Central Park, NYC, USA

Some park in Moscow, Russia

Regular readers will note a link at the top of the entry to a map. The boys at Travellerspoint have added a mapping feature. So my future blogs (as well as my past ones, if you want to go back and read) will include maps for your education and viewing pleasure.

A short statistical analysis of my travel year. I need to keep track of my time spent out of Canada for tax purposes, and as such I can say that I spent 215 days of 365 possible (58.9%) of my time outside of Canada this year. Sadly, most of it was in less than glamorous New Jersey. I also flew a total of 42,985 miles this year.

Anyway, this entry is really boring, eh? Next week I'm off to Panama for a week, so hopefully I'll have something nicer to write about. As my last entry of the year, though, I do vow to make a New Years Resolution.

I resolve to NOT write any more about how crappy I find Newark airport. It seems like it's almost all I wrote about this year. So no more next year on Newark.

Of course, I just found out today that I could be in Atlanta next year for a spell. Have you heard the horror stories about Hartsfield-Jackson airport in Atlanta? You probably will...

HAPPY HOLIDAYS!

This weekend was the USA Thanksgiving Day weekend. Thanksgiving, for my non-North American readers, is a day to give thanks for a bountiful harvest. As far as I know, there are only two countries that have such a holiday, Canada and the USA. Canada celebrates there Thanksgiving in mid-October (due to the more northerly longitude meaning an earlier harvest), and the USA (with more southern climes) celebrates in late November. Americans celebrate Thanksgiving on the Thursday, and traditionally take of the Friday as well, making for a 4 day long weekend.

The Thanksgiving weekend in the USA is one of the busiest travel periods of the year, when millions of Americans get in planes, on trains, on buses or in cars to travel to have family dinners at Grandma’s house. It’s an awful time to be in an airport, and so I decided to skip my usual flight home to Toronto for the weekend, and instead spend the weekend down in New York and New Jersey.

Spending Thanksgiving in New York meant I also had the opportunity to see an American tradition live and in person – the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade. The parade was started in 1920 by Macy’s department store to herald the arrival of Santa Claus to the store. As a Canadian, I want to point out here that the Macy’s Parade, while potentially more famous, was in fact inspired by the Toronto Santa Claus Parade, which was started in 1905 and is still one of the largest Santa Claus parades in the world.

Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade, Celebrating Turkey and Football

There is something that sets the Macy’s parade apart, besides for the international media coverage, and that’s the giant balloons. In 1927 a Felix the Cat balloon was introduced into the parade, and soon the tradition grew to include many balloons.

On Friday night I headed up to the west side of Central Park to see the balloons being inflated. This was an opportunity to see the balloons tethered to the ground, in the event that there weren’t flying the next day. Winds were projected to be high on Thursday morning, and for safety reasons the balloons might have to be cancelled to ensure no injuries. In 1997 a woman was seriously injured after the Cat in The Hat balloon hit a lamp post, knocking it into her.

Scooby Doobie Doo, where are you? Oh, there you are

The next morning I got up and went to the parade itself. The weather was awful, rainy and cold and windy. The balloons were flying, but as a consequence of the winds, they were kept at a lower altitude than usual. I arrived somewhat late, so I had to try and take pictures through the crowds. Luckily, I found a place by the end of the parade where they were deflating the balloons, and I got some good shots there.

The inexplicably French Monsieur Tete de Pomme de Terre

Look, it’s a bird, it’s a plane, no… it’s Super Grover!

A certain square panted individual

My Personal favorite, Dora, because she is an explorer!

Overall, I’m glad I went to the parade, but I probably won’t bother going again. Parades are generally pretty boring, and there’s a LOT of people around.

Some participants try and weave through the crowds after completing their duties in the parade

After spending Thursday night in New York, I got in the car and headed down to Atlantic City, New Jersey. Atlantic City is a resort town 2 and half hours south of New York City. It’s always been a resort community due to it’s proximity to Philadelphia and New York City. On June 2, 1977, Brendan Byrne, governor of New Jersey, signed a law allowing casino gambling in Atlantic City, and New Jersey became the second state in the USA to allow gambling. There are a number of casinos along the famous boardwalk, and some newer ones have been popping up on the other side of town as well.

Casinos

Casinos

Casinos

Atlantic City’s boardwalk

Atlantic City’s boardwalk

Atlantic City has never quite taken on the stature of Las Vegas. Las Vegas was the first and has always been the more popular gambling destination. The place also doesn’t have the same crazy, all out sin city atmosphere that Vegas has. It still has lots of sin, but it seems more muted. The casinos are noisy, but outside of the casinos seems quiet. There isn’t the same amount of sex on sale, either. The massage parlours are there, but there aren’t any people handing out escort service flyers on the streets.

I tried to come up with some potential explanations. It could be that it’s because Vegas was first, or perhaps because of Vegas’ criminal past. Perhaps it is because people in general have to fly to Vegas, whereas most people coming to Atlantic City drive or take a bus. They aren’t away, and thus don’t feel the same sense of being able to let go and be away.

My favorite theory, though, is that the sea is calming. Most of the casinos are along the boardwalk, and people walk between them along the ocean side. There is something calming and peaceful in hearing the surf crashing on the beach, feeling the sun on your face and smelling the salty air.

Me on the beach

Beach shots

Beach shots

Beach shots

Atlantic City, in addition to gambling, is also famous for it’s salt water taffy, a sticky sweet treat that comes in bite-sized chewy pieces. If you head down to AC, be sure to try some.

Taffy shop – one of many along the boardwalk

Piece of salt water taffy, this one flavoured like sour apple.

Most people will have a passing familiarity to the street names in Atlantic City, as it was featured as all the properties in the original Monopoly game (though recent versions have used other properties, and the UK has for a long time had a London based version of the game).

I was staying in a hotel on Pacific Avenue, which was considerably less than the $1275 rent for landing on the Monopoly square for Pacific Avenue with a hotel on it. The two most expensive properties on the Monopoly board were the Boardwalk and Park Place.

Park Place is in fact a very desirable location. So desirable that the street barely even exists anymore, as the Bally’s hotel is built overtop of it and it has become mainly an entrance to the Bally’s Parking garage. A hotel built, literally, on the street.

Ironically, there was a Santa Claus parade in Atlantic City when I was there. With just one float (carrying the fat red-suited man himself) and one band, it was much smaller than the Macy’s parade I had seen two days earlier. It was, though, much nicer weather. And no crowds!

Merry One Month to Christmas everybody!