The Seattle Tattle

About 10 days ago I went for a trip down to Seattle with Emily, her cousin, and her cousin's boyfriend. Quick summary:

• I got fingerprinted, photographed, and charged $US6 for the privilege. Australian's are still presumed to be criminals in the US apparently.
• We got quite lost by following an under-programmed GPS system. It contained decent maps for Vancouver, but didn't contain any maps for Seattle. It successfully delivered us to an intersection in the middle of nowhere, notable only for a nearby Subway store. Perhaps it was hungry? :)
• We had a very nice lunch at a seafood restaurant called McCormick & Schmick's. Everyone seemed very happy with their food, and the prices were very good. Highly recommended.
• We came across a combined sci-fi and music museum and (subject to some mild protestations) did a little tour of it during our trip. Very cool.
• We visited Pike Place Market. More importantly, we visited the first ever Starbucks store, and a picked up a nice big mug as a souvenir. It will live at Emily's place so that I don't break any of her mugs by accident (her mugs are all special gifts she has received over the years...).
• We visited the duty-free outlet shopping on the highway between Vancouver and Seattle. Scored myself a lot of random stuff (unisex perfume/cologne, a couple of shirts, some metal mixing/steaming bowls, a $15 pair of shoes, etc). I think we shopped for almost 5 hours...
• We visited a Red Robin restaurant on the way home... and left behind 2 watches and a mobile phone. We didn't realise they were missing until we needed to use the phone back in Canada. Oops! Luckily, the Red Robin staff were very helpful and posted them back up for us. Ended up costing under $12 for the postage, plus $35 for deactivating/activating a replacement SIM card.

I think I'm looking forward to making another trip down into the US, though much more likely to go camping next time.

P.S. With a few exceptions, I don't post other people's names on here. So technically this post isn't a tattle, except perhaps it can be called 'aimless chatter'. :)