Holiday blog

We stayed at the Ace Hotel which was, as the name sugests, ace. It was a bit like a hip hostel in a cool part of town (Belltown, where the Grunge scene sprang, or rather slithered, up). Here's a reject shot from their catalogue of a post-grunger helping himself to breakfast.
















Fortified by breaksfast, we scooted up the Space Needle. Rosy's new North Face coat came in handy, as it was absolutely freezing at the top.






















After a day back at 29th Avenue, we pick up our hire car and set off for the San Juan Islands, a collection of islands in the Puget Sound. It was a bit mad trying to drive an automatic car on the wrong side of the road- me and Rosy had a practice in the mercifully deserted blocks near the house in our blue Nissan Sentra.

We took the car ferry from Anacortes to Lopez Island.
















Lopez is a small sleepy place with pretty much one road. Everyone who drives past you waves, as they probably know everyone else on the island in February. So it's a real change in the pace of life for us. We drive towards the coast and see bald eagles circling overhead. We go for a walk through a forest...















and spot some seals lying on some rocks. They are very curious about us and keep coming over to take a look. At one point, six of them drift over to say hello. I suppose they don't often see anything as exotic as English people.














Our accomodation is a log cabin...















with an outdoor hot tub. I am not smiling- my face has frozen solid.














We also visited Lime Kiln Point, which in the summer is a great place to see the resident and transiet orca pods (that's groups of killer whales to you and me). A killer whale eats up to 1,500 pounds of salmon a day. That would cost you a fair bit down at Tesco's.














None of them came out to play for us, but we did see another seal (or was it one of the same ones from yesterday?!)

From Lopez, we took the ferry to San Juan, a bigger island. This was our view from a hotel in Friday Harbour. The following day, we took a ferry like this one (or was it the same one?) and headed back to Seattle.