Like I said last time I was glad to reach Seattle, if only so I could shower and change clothes. Alas the fates conspired against me with a late check-in in the afternoon. I could leave my luggage at the hostel, on the edge of Chinatown / International District, but that was it. The Starbucks didn’t seem to mind my unwashed state, especially looking at the rest of the clientele. They may have tried to fancy up the place by calling it the International District, with a big Chinese gate and dragons on lampposts, but like any other Chinatown I’ve ever visited this was clearly the poor area of town. And at night it got pretty sketchy. When people, such as tour guides, learned where I stayed at they were quick to warn me off from going around there at night. I didn’t need the warnings, my situational awareness passive is pretty levelled up by now.
I will say that a block away, also on the edge of Chinatown, there was a big supermarket (very convenient) and the best store I had been to yet: Kinokuniya. Comics, manga, figurines, you name it. I loved this place, it was like a small taste of the stores in Akihabara, Tokyo. I restrained myself though and didn’t buy much from here. I am actually quite proud of myself for that.
Seattle itself was a bit of a mixed back for me, like the International District it had some good things inside it, but the whole package wasn’t so pretty. The biggest thing was that after a while all cities kind of start to look the same, and for me this feeling hit when I was in Seattle. It had a waterfront, but unlike Chicago’s you couldn’t walk its whole length. There was a lot of construction on the waterside as well as a freeway that ran by it, taking up most of the available space. Parks were few and far in between as well and there were a lot of homeless people around.
Now there were some nice spots, such as the Columbia Center, the public library (which was designed by Dutch architect Rem Koolhaas), Pike Place Market and the Space Needle.
The view of the city from the observation deck on the 73rd floor of the Columbia Center is impressive, and the skyline as seen from Puget Sound on one of the boats is very striking – especially after sunset when the city lights up. I was very lucky with the weather so I saw Mount Rainier every day, which usually doesn’t happen.
Pike Place Market was born out of a need to cut out the middleman and let people meet with producers directly, and it is massive. I am also reasonably sure that by now it has turned into a tourist trap and isn’t as cheap as it used to be. Had a Seattle hotdog here, which is a hotdog with cream cheese. You wouldn’t think that works, but it did.
The best thing I did in the city was a free walking tour. Sean, both owner and tour guide, was very enthusiastic about the city and that feeling was infectious. He had some good tips on what to do as well, such as going to the observation deck of the Columbia Center instead of the Space Needle. Not only was it cheaper, less busy, and higher than the Space Needle, but from there you could get the Space Needle in your photos. As it really is the defining landmark of Seattle you want it in your pictures.
Really though, the city was not why I was there. Nature is where I wanted to go. It is what the west coast is known for after all.
I took two local buses to the first location I really wanted to go to, Snoqualmie Falls. Where you might ask? I didn’t know the waterfalls existed until Hengest, a Youtuber/Streamer I watch, started making Pokémon Go videos where he explored the area in and around his hometown. He revealed some really beautiful places like the Snoqualmie Falls and the river. There were tours that also went to Snoqualmie Falls, but those only spent a half an hour at the falls and that’s not enough time to actually get down to the river and the picturesque views there. Plus the regular buses only cost about five dollars one-way. So for ten dollars you can see the falls, spend some time in the national park, and then walk to Snoqualmie for lunch, the railroad museum, and views of Mount Si in the distance, which is what I did. There’s not much in Snoqualmie itself, but it was nice to relax there for a moment after the bustle of Seattle.
Often hidden behind a haze of mist and clouds and visible from Seattle only a third of the year, is Mount Rainier, one of the volcanoes of the Cascade Mountain Range and the largest of them all. You can spend years at this national park and not see everything. Me, I only had one day over there as part of a tour. First stop of the tour was a supermarket, so we could get lunch if we wanted. The tour guide would tell us when it was the best time to eat it on the bus so we could maximize discovery time on the big stop at Paradise. Now that’s my kind of tour. I hate going to a stop in a beautiful place only to spend time in a restaurant, waiting for ages for overprized food. That’s not to say I didn’t do that a time or two, but I am never really happy about it when I do.
The day we went up the mountain was a good one, very sunny and hardly any clouds – even though some clouds often make for better pictures, the lack of them did mean the summit was visible all day long and from multiple angles as well. Going up the mountain you pass through several distinct layers of forest, some of which are old growth! Those old trees are a beauty to behold.
The big stop on the tour was at Paradise, which is on the mountain but still quite a ways from the summit. Climbing to the summit is possible, but only as part of a multi-day endeavor where they first ascertain that you’re fit enough over two days and then you climb up there in two days, along the glacial ice and sharp rocks. The mountain is often used as a training ground for climbs in places like the Himalayas, so that should tell you something about the difficulty. There’s a plethora of walking trails from Paradise (this name is not ill-chosen at all, it’s remarkably beautiful there) and I followed several in the time we were allotted, which wasn’t enough time to actually follow any of them to the end, but with backtracking I still saw quite a lot. Lots of photo opportunities as well. We looked out for elk and black bears, but there were none to be seen. Would have liked to have seen them, but you can’t have everything.
On the way down we stopped to walk through some old growth, and lest we forget that the mountain is an active volcano, we stopped at a small bubbling pool (the size of your hand) where the mountain released some of its pressure. In the distance we saw larger plumes where the same happened, but at that particular spot we could actually touch the cold bubbling water.
Mount Rainier really impressed me and along with Snoqualmie Falls really made the trip.