mark his words: Rock music and rock climbing in Seattle

After one of the shortest driving trips we encountered so far, a mere three hours from Portland to Seattle, we arrived early in the day with plenty of time to tick off a few sights around the place. Seattle Place was home to the grandiose, but slightly smaller than expected Space Needle (it's presence in the Seattle Skyline is much less prominent than I had previously thought), whilst also being home to the Experience Music Project, a striking and indescribable looking building the houses a plethora of rock music memorabilia, paying special attention to local rock icons Nirvana. Turns out they have more than one song.

A novel yet practical trip along the monorail (queue Simpsons reference) took us down to the waterfront to experience the Pike Place Market. It appeared to be winding down given our late afternoon arrival, but were still able to witness the fish catching antics and jovial personalities surrounding. A few stopoffs at some notable rock music venues and pubs were our final real agenda items before arriving with Justin, our couchsurfing host in the northwest of Seattle.

With two full days ahead of us in Seattle and a fair bit of time to kill, we joined Justin, an avid hiker, on what he described as a 1.5 hour "hike" up Mt Si. Needless to say, that 1.5 hours for a seasoned hiker is not quite the same for someone who decides to partake in said hike in $20 sneakers. About six hours and 14 kilometres later, and we wearily arrived back at Justin's car, muscles aching that we didn't know existed. Whilst the pain has lasted for a few days yet, the memory of the views from atop the 4000 feet summit above the clouds is something will hopefully last a bit longer.

We managed to hobble along the next day to Safeco Field to take in America's favourite past-time. The journey was made even worse when the hostel we had booked refused to acknowledge our booking, despite having written confirmation, and left us to find our own accomodation elsewhere. With good luck, rather than good management, we managed to find a hostel that was even closer to the game, and closer to where we needed to be the next day. But back to the baseball. The Mariners had lost the night before to the Rangers, but a strong performance from Felix Hernandez and my new (first) cult hero Ichiro Suziki kept the Rangers scoreless in what was a well celebrated 7-0 victory to the home side, and a great finish to our time in Seattle.