First impressions of Seattle when we walked into the city from our hostel in Chinatown on a quiet Saturday afternoon: a small clump of high-rises, deserted streets, parks filled with sleeping homeless people, roaring overpasses and lots of cement. The city centre looked abandoned and the streets were gloomy and empty.
We found the waterfront, which was not beautiful, just your average fishing town waterfront, except for a scattering of touristy shops on several piers. Looking out across the water, however, we saw snow-capped mountains and big ferries coming into port silently. Cutting the waterfront off from the cluster of high-rises were two big overpasses from where you could hear the constant clamour of traffic. You had to walk under these and over train tracks to get to the city.
Walking home that night, we saw a now-familiar sight: a guy walking alone, singing at the top of his voice. Another guy approached us and said 'where's Everett? [assumed he was talking about his street] I don't know where it is, cos I'm on Mars'.
Next morning we caught the bus to a suburb called Ballard where we went along to Mars Hill Church. Mars Hill has a fairly high-profile preacher called Mark Driscoll and the church has about 8 campuses in Seattle, one in New Mexico, and soon their church plants in California and [somewhere else I can't recall] are opening. The Ballard campus was in a very inconspicuous building in a quiet street. It had lots of different spaces - the main church part, a coffee room, a large entry room with couches, another room with heaps of couches.
Ballard is the campus that Mark Driscoll preaches at live. His video-recorded message is then sent to the other campuses so they get his sermons a week later than Ballard. The church is known as a megachurch but the individual campuses are not huge. It's well-known internationally though, and they have a great website where people download the sermons for free - www.marshillchurch.org - and there are some phenomenal number of downloads per week. We'd seen a lot of Driscoll's sermons prior to this and were hoping he'd be there.
But he wasn't, and had pre-recorded his message. Often he does this when his son has a baseball game or whatever. But it was great regardless. His teaching is really great. This was sermon #81 or #82 (I think) on Luke - he's been preaching on Luke for a couple of years now with other sermon series thrown in amongst them.
Afterwards, we experienced Mars Hill's own very specutacularly weird coffee - I can't remember the name but it had apple, caramel, and something else in it . It was alright!
We went to the Space Needle, saw an IMAX movie for free (Born to be Wild in 3D), went to Pike Place Market and just sat and watched people for awhile. Near Pike Place Market there we sat on a hill where lots of homeless people were sleeping and watched as a guy approached several people for a 'favour'. We saw another guy crawling around finding cigarette butts and then sucking on them. At one stage a father came along with his two sons and handed out sandwiches to the homeless.
That night we walked forever and ever, about 50 000 miles I think, to find a graveyard that Bruce and Brandon Lee were buried in. It was closed. But on the way back, we met an old man who had trained at the same martial arts school as Bruce Lee and had known him. Nice. At the bus stop in the city, an old man with huge dreads down to his waist was smoking something and having a conversation with himself. Seems like there's someone just like this at every bus stop we go to.
Saturday, 9 July 2011
Tuesday, 5 July 2011
The Fog City
We found San Francisco to be a stunning city, so vibrant and colourful and with a great vibe - music everywhere, street entertainment, sunshine... except for when the fog hung around, but it was never over the city, instead floating down over the bay and the bridge. Beautiful.
We saw all the famous sites: the Golden Gate bridge, Fisherman's Wharf, Pier 39, the windiest street (it criss-crosses up a small hill), the Victorian houses at Alamo Square (of Full House fame!) and the cable cars. We did not visit Alcatraz - apparently we should have booked weeks in advance. All booked out.
There were a LOT of homeless people here. We had a few conversations with people. One guy said 'you're looking rich today'. On every corner people sat there with cardboard signs. They weren't menacing at all like in some other cities - they were more... hopeless. One guy wanted a bite of our souvlakis and kept persisting despite us telling him no and asking him other questions - he just wanted a bite. He walked off saying 'you're terrible people'. In hindsight: we should have given them to him and bought ourselves another. Damn hindsight! Or lack of foresight.
Highlights of San Fran: drinking Starbucks (America's Starbucks is alright! Nothing like the dirty water Australian version), the drive into San Fran with messy traffic, and riding the cable car in the morning - we stood on the outside so we had the best view.
And lastly, some observations of America so far (oooh here it is!):
- It's so common for someone to be walking down the street alone, singing at top note, without a single inhibition! Sometimes accompanied by dance moves.
- US flags are everywhere in some places. Australians just don't plaster their houses with flags. I wonder why we don't and they do.
- Jaywalking - I knew it was illegal here (and probably is at home too, but no one enforces it) but they actually cross at crossings, and wait for the signal. Adrian and I went to casually cross the street in Santa Barbara and a cop came from nowhere on his motorcycle, turned off the engine and said 'you guys can't cross here. you gotta go to the crosswalk'. It was a single lane of traffic that we were about to cross!
- Burgers, 'grills' (still don't quite know what they are) and Mexican food is everywhere. They eat so many burgers! And food ending with 'dog' - corn dogs, chilli dogs etc
- Huge cars (but I think I knew that already)
- And everyone is so polite and well-spoken. Australians aren't impolite... we're just laid back :)
We saw all the famous sites: the Golden Gate bridge, Fisherman's Wharf, Pier 39, the windiest street (it criss-crosses up a small hill), the Victorian houses at Alamo Square (of Full House fame!) and the cable cars. We did not visit Alcatraz - apparently we should have booked weeks in advance. All booked out.
There were a LOT of homeless people here. We had a few conversations with people. One guy said 'you're looking rich today'. On every corner people sat there with cardboard signs. They weren't menacing at all like in some other cities - they were more... hopeless. One guy wanted a bite of our souvlakis and kept persisting despite us telling him no and asking him other questions - he just wanted a bite. He walked off saying 'you're terrible people'. In hindsight: we should have given them to him and bought ourselves another. Damn hindsight! Or lack of foresight.
Highlights of San Fran: drinking Starbucks (America's Starbucks is alright! Nothing like the dirty water Australian version), the drive into San Fran with messy traffic, and riding the cable car in the morning - we stood on the outside so we had the best view.
And lastly, some observations of America so far (oooh here it is!):
- It's so common for someone to be walking down the street alone, singing at top note, without a single inhibition! Sometimes accompanied by dance moves.
- US flags are everywhere in some places. Australians just don't plaster their houses with flags. I wonder why we don't and they do.
- Jaywalking - I knew it was illegal here (and probably is at home too, but no one enforces it) but they actually cross at crossings, and wait for the signal. Adrian and I went to casually cross the street in Santa Barbara and a cop came from nowhere on his motorcycle, turned off the engine and said 'you guys can't cross here. you gotta go to the crosswalk'. It was a single lane of traffic that we were about to cross!
- Burgers, 'grills' (still don't quite know what they are) and Mexican food is everywhere. They eat so many burgers! And food ending with 'dog' - corn dogs, chilli dogs etc
- Huge cars (but I think I knew that already)
- And everyone is so polite and well-spoken. Australians aren't impolite... we're just laid back :)
Friday, 1 July 2011
North on Highway One
Hello it's Adrian here. On the morning of the 28th we headed back to the airport to pick up a hire car. It was a compact Chevrolet Aveo - not the most intimidating vehicle on the roads. The streets of LA were full of heavy pickups, vans, Harleys and sports cars - all as loud, fast, and aggressive as possible.
Our GPS took some time to charge and locate itself, and in the meantime Renae had navigated me through the busiest Santa Monica traffic toward Highway One northbound. A few manic freeways kept my eyes peeled! We stopped in a pretty town called Santa Barbara for lunch, and drove on to San Simeon motel for the night.
On the 29th we continued onto the Big Sur coast, stopping many times for some amazing sights including gray whales, elephant seals, squirrels and a jaw-droppingly amazing coastline (we'll have to use photos to describe this).
The traffic got serious as we headed on to San Francisco (12 lanes merging into 8, a 15 lane toll gate), and we made into the CBD to find our accommodation and to return the car.
Renae will tell you about beautiful San Francisco in her next post, coming soon! Bye for now!
Our GPS took some time to charge and locate itself, and in the meantime Renae had navigated me through the busiest Santa Monica traffic toward Highway One northbound. A few manic freeways kept my eyes peeled! We stopped in a pretty town called Santa Barbara for lunch, and drove on to San Simeon motel for the night.
On the 29th we continued onto the Big Sur coast, stopping many times for some amazing sights including gray whales, elephant seals, squirrels and a jaw-droppingly amazing coastline (we'll have to use photos to describe this).
The traffic got serious as we headed on to San Francisco (12 lanes merging into 8, a 15 lane toll gate), and we made into the CBD to find our accommodation and to return the car.
Renae will tell you about beautiful San Francisco in her next post, coming soon! Bye for now!
Thursday, 30 June 2011
Tuesday, 28 June 2011
California here we come
I'm writing on Adrian's phone as we haven't had access to a computer yet. So watch out for spelling mistakes and auto-correct stuff ups galore! Our flight across, 15 hours, was not so bad. We got great entertainment value from the chief flight attendant who used the word 'baggie' to describe the zip lock bag you put your liquids in. Seems this word is quite normal in the American dialect but sounds like you're talking to a 5 year old in Australian :)
We got to LA an hour earlier than we'd left Australia. After we figured out the confusion of airport shuttles and buses we spent the afternoon at Santa Monica. The beach was packed and Santa Monica pier was crowded with vacationing American families buying tacky souvenirs and going on the old style amusement park rides. On the lower steps of the pier, a few men were fishing, mostly pulling up weeds and rubbish. Made me think though what a beautiful spot it would be when it's peaceful, in the early morning.
Today, after a huge, amazing sleep, we picked up our hire car and actually drove out of LA and up the coast to San Simeon where we are now. Adrian mastered driving in reverse but we still haven't worked out why people turn right on a red light and whether people actually read speed limit signs?
Tomorrow we drive the rest of the way up the foggy Big Sur Coast to San Francisco. We have 'if you're going to San Francisco' on our road trip CD and we will be wearing flowers in our hair, Adrian included, whether he likes it or not.
We got to LA an hour earlier than we'd left Australia. After we figured out the confusion of airport shuttles and buses we spent the afternoon at Santa Monica. The beach was packed and Santa Monica pier was crowded with vacationing American families buying tacky souvenirs and going on the old style amusement park rides. On the lower steps of the pier, a few men were fishing, mostly pulling up weeds and rubbish. Made me think though what a beautiful spot it would be when it's peaceful, in the early morning.
Today, after a huge, amazing sleep, we picked up our hire car and actually drove out of LA and up the coast to San Simeon where we are now. Adrian mastered driving in reverse but we still haven't worked out why people turn right on a red light and whether people actually read speed limit signs?
Tomorrow we drive the rest of the way up the foggy Big Sur Coast to San Francisco. We have 'if you're going to San Francisco' on our road trip CD and we will be wearing flowers in our hair, Adrian included, whether he likes it or not.
Saturday, 25 June 2011
Here's the plan :)
Hobart - Melbourne - LA - San Simeon - San Francisco - Seattle - Chicago - Ohio - New Hampshire - Boston - New York - Copenhagen - Bornholm - Berlin - Vevey - Venice - Cinque Terre - Rome - Hong Kong - Hobart
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