Day 8- May 27, 2006 - Seattle

The busride wasn't too bad coming down- it was packed and the driver reminded me of Colonel Sanders. Doug read the whole time and I listened to the CDs he brought. I expected the questioning at the border to take longer coming back than going there but the guy was a million times friendlier than the butch braid woman who grilled us on the way in. This guy was more content to talk to us about misconceptions of the weather and the difference between east and west coast.

It was raining when we got here and we took a cab to the hotel. Doug pouted out of hunger (though he's not telling me he was frustrated because he expected me to have everything planned out and we had to wait for a cab instead of going to the closest busstop that I looked up). We checked into the hotel, which has left a lot to be desired-

They gave us a room apart from the main building of the hotel, which means that you could step out of the door to the room and into the parking lot. We can hear all the noise from the main road outside and there's a draft from the half a foot between the bottom of the door and the floor. We got a king sized bed, but I guess they didn't have enough sheets for that size, because ours definitely doesn't fit, meaning that we spend half the night trying to make sure the mattress is covered- (because I'm grossed out by the thought of sleeping with no buffer zone between me and the hotel mattress.)

We walked around looking for food- hungry Doug acted like a jerk to me for not knowing where the good places to eat were and I tried to explain to him that I suspected most of the food places were bars first and restaurants as an afterthought, but he didn't listen and wasn't convinced until we'd walked the entire city.

Back at the hotel, which is in a scummy looking part of town, Doug went out searching for coffee, figuring that there must be a Starbucks within walking distance. There was, but it closed at 6 and it was already well past 8. He ended up wandering around through the crowded Friday night streets, and after giving a passing car bad directions, he came back to the room.

Today we went to the museums. There was a fair/cultural fest going on at the Seattle Center and we didn't look through it as much as we probably should have because we were sticking to our agenda, worried that 7 hours would not be enough time for the 3 museums we had planned.

First up was the Pacific Science Center, where we hit every photobooth in the place. There was a video game exhibit that just opened and we spent a while playing old arcade games, and battling each other at MarioKart. Doug finds games that he played when he was a kid, tells stories, and I point out that these things are before my time.

Afterwards, we got pizza at Zeek's where the waitress was entirely too happy but we were willing to forgive it because the food was good and we were hungry.

The Sci-Fi Museum and the Experience Music Project are connected, and we went to the Sci-Fi one first. It wasn't at all what I expected it to be and is a thousand times cooler in theory. It was mostly books and movie posters displayed but nothing particularly interesting about them. I guess I expect places to tell a story- artists statements or some sort of insight to the genre, an emphasis on historical context- something that I couldn't get just by reading the back of a book or a movie blurb. I was hoping that at least the gift shop would be worthwhile, full of old movie posters and robot postcards, but it was nothing like that. Instead, it was based on Star Wars and Star Trek, neither one of which I needed to come to Seattle to know about.

The Experience Music Project wasn't much better. I wasn't wowwed by it last time I was here, and I don't know why I expected it to be much different this time around, except that Doug is super into music and I'd hoped that his enthusiasm would rub off on me. He wasn't too thrilled either, except for the poster section- a display of show fliers- and really it was more about the art than the music.

Afterwards we walked through the arcade/amusement park. Doug won me a stuffed frog playing Skeeball and named it Dexter after a street a block over from the hotel. We got coffee and went back to the hotel with the intention of going out again later on, but it didn't happen- we got caught up watching the mid-90s teen comedies that we playing on TV.

There's a film festival going on here now- SIFF- all independent films and we were thinking about going to some if we can navigate our way there in the rain.