Los Angeles (Day 9): Home again!!!

So finally after nine days of driving, walking, busing, and exploring, I've made it back to my home in Los Angeles. Like always, it's nice to be home after a vacation. Anyway, I thought I would compile a reflective list of the places I went and the things I saw!

• Portland Oregon:
• Memorable experience: Rocco's Pizza in the wonderfully eclectic neighborhood of where downtown transitions into residential
• Like LA: Laid-back residents who can be extremely approachable and friendly!
• Unlike LA: You can actually see the hills surrounding the city
• Future visits?: I could see spending a solid week up here.
  
• Vancouver, British Columbia
• Memorable experience: Biking Stanley Park!!!
  
• Like LA: Bustling and crazy night-life scene that attracts a young crowd.
  
• Unlike LA: You can actually walk to places you'd like to go to.
  
• Future visits?: It'd be a great place to spend a summer doing an internship in (not that I could see myself doing an internship ever... :) )
• Seattle, Washington
• Memorable experience: Volunteer Park / Capitol Hill
  
• Like LA: It's easy to get lost in the tourist traps that lurk in major areas through this city.
  
• Unlike LA: Downtown actually meets the Puget sound, creating a beautiful city center right on the waterfront.
  
• Future visits?: Again, maybe a week sometime.
• San Francisco, California
• Memorable experience: Haight-Ashbury / Golden Gate Park
  
• Like LA: Another California city with a "California" reputation, a laid-back artistic community and a large business and professional population.
  
• Unlike LA: I can walk around in the summer without getting sweaty.
  
• Future visits?: This would be a cool place to maybe work in a hostel during some future summer. Just a random thought

Anyway, thanks for reading all these postings of my road trip. I'll continue to post for the rest of my summer (which comes to a screeching halt this Monday), and then decide whether I want to (or have time for) a personal blog and a professional blog. We'll see!

Seattle (Day 6): Goodnight Seattle

So one of the most amazing places to watch a sunset in Seattle is secluded Volunteer Park, which in addition to being home of the Seattle Asian Art Museum, has a picturesque reservoir (if that is even possible). Either way, the view was fantastic, and afterwards, I found myself headed down to the Capital Hill area (which is a college-age type neighborhood servicing Seattle University). Anyway, I'm off to bed before another long drive tomorrow, the final city, San Francisco.

Also, pictures of Seattle are now available here. Enjoy!

Seattle (Day 6): It's all about your attitude...

New York has its delis, Chicago has its pizza, Los Angeles has great Mexican food, and Seattle has, well, its coffee. I suppose it is alright to be elitist about something you do very well. And I guess it's just about the only city where you can walk into a Starbucks and still feel the pride of buying local. Having thus successfully avoided the chain so far, I grabbed an iced coffee from a local cafe after a full day of walking. After sleeping in until about 8:30, I headed downtown, whereupon I stumbled into a Steinway shop. For those of you know what item Steinway sells, you can understand why I was such a sucker and walked in. Anyway, the salesman was extremely friendly and offered me the opportunity to try out their finest model, whose selling price was....get this....$107,000!!!! Wow. It was probably the most expensive item I've ever touched! Later in the morning I boarded the Elliot Bay Ferry to Bainbridge Island, a small island across the bay from Seattle. The island was not terribly interesting, but the boat ride provided spectacular views of the city!!! Following that, I walked through Pioneer Square, Pike's Market, and Belltown. Right now, I'm pretty tired so I'm relaxing a bit before heading up to Volunteer Park for sunset tonight!

Seattle (Day 5): Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego?

So who else remembers growing up with the computer game (and television show) Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego?, a game in which you would use clues to determine the geographic location of a major theft (the object of which typically involved something literally "un-stealable", like a building, a lake, or a park). Anyway, it sure looks like one of Carmen's henchmen has stolen and transported Los Angeles' Walt Disney Concert Hall, and plopped it down right next to the Seattle Space Needle, only to have it melt a little in the summer sun. Well, it turns out that this awfully familiar looking architecture, the Experience Music Project, was in fact designed by the same architect (hmm....since I'm feeling kind of saucy, let's do this...for a free coffee, my treat, be the first to post a reply naming the architect). Anyway, EMP was fairly disappointing, albeit another tourist trap of sorts that only succeeded in it's exhibits of Northwest music, the history of electric guitars, and a memorial to Jimi Hendrix. Honestly, it wasn't all that impressive, and I couldn't possibly envision going to it more than once (unlike a certain museum in Cooperstown, N.Y. where I could fantasize about attending every year and enjoy it fully each time!!!).

WCRT: T - 18 hours!!!

My bags are packed. My car has been serviced. I'm ready to go! Tomorrow at "o-dark-thirty", I head out in my amazing Honda Civic into the vastness that is the Pacific Northwest. The major stops include Portland, Vancouver (Canada), Seattle, and San Francisco. I anticipate the entire trip to take approximately 9 days, filled with exploring, relaxing and taking in the amazing beauty that lies in stark contrast to the urban jungle in which I currently live! Luckily, the longest drive is the early in the trip (the first day), which will be the fifteen hour trek from Los Angeles to Portland, OR. However, having google-mapped (which is a surpirsing new verb to enter the English language) the route, it is no longer than the drive from Central NY to Central Iowa, a journey that our family undertook on more than one occasion growing up! Anyway, there will be lots more posts in the upcoming week letting you all know what I'm up to there in the NW!