Seattle

Well, everyone must be thinking we never got out of Portland. This holidaying is hard work. I just haven't managed to get to somewhere and get the time to update the blog. We only spent 3 days in Portland before going to Seattle to visit our good friends Dan and Karlene.

Dan and Karlene made us so welcome in their home and with their extended family it was hard to leave. Dan took some time off work and showed us around Seattle and took us to Port Townsend where he grew up. Its the place where they made the movie an Officer and a Gentleman. Port Townsend had some magnificent Victorian Mansions and like every where we seem to have been, the scenery is stunning.

We visited the Arboretum where Karlene works which is really beautiful. If the Canberra Arboretum turns out like the one in Seattle it will be a real draw card.


Among other places we also went to Dan's favourite shop, the Aussie Pie Shop, where they claim to make real Aussie pies. They were pretty good pies, but they have been adapted for American tastes so there wasn't a steak and kidney in sight.

While we were in Seattle we bought a car. Its a Honda Civic LX 1994. Its registered for 12 months and we had no probs with getting insurance. So far it has been really reliable. We practised driving under Dan's tuition and have both got the hang of driving on the wrong side of the road although I have to admit that Alan is much better at it than me. I am OK on the highway but get confused in the traffic in the towns. I feel like a learner driver all over again.

We took a week out from Seattle to go to Canada to sort out our drivers licences because we lost them in a bag on a bus in LA. Unbelievably, the NSW Motor Registry are not satisfied with a Public Notary from America verifying your identity, even though it is far more rigorous than any Australian Post Office employee sighting your credentials (they even took our finger prints). We had to go to Vancouver to the nearest Australian Consulate to have an officer there do the same thing. I was highly pissed off by the bureaucratic bullshit gone made but the best thing was we got to see Vancouver.