Since arriving here on election night I’ve been feeling a bit lethargic, I don’t now if I’m coming down with something or if it’s just the previous six weeks catching up with me. The weather hasn’t helped much either, it rained almost all day every day up until today. I’ve spent a lot of time just hanging around the hostel chatting to the other travelers, watching movies and sleeping, lots of sleeping.

When I did venture out I found Seattle to be a really cool place where people can be themselves, it seems like every other person in the street is covered in tattoos and piercings with pink and green hair.

Being the home of Hendrix, Nirvana and Pearl Jam, it was unsurprising that most of the bars here are slightly on the rockier side, which suits me. One in particular stood out called Shorty’s on 2nd Ave. All the tables in the bar are made from pinball tables with another room out the back with around another 30 tables. Apparently the bar hosts international pinball tournaments as well.

I didn’t really see many of the attractions around Seattle, but one placed I did really enjoy was the Pike Place Market which was handily situated across the road from the hostel. I think it’s mostly famous for the fish stall where people shout and throw fish a lot in front of crowds of tourists, but if you venture a little deeper inside there’s a myriad of cool tiny little specialist shops selling bizarre things like old movie posters, magic tricks wind up toys old Indian herbal remedy’s an trippy little action figures.

The thing I’m enjoying most about travel is the totally random things I end up doing at the last minute. Last night I ended up in a bar at 1am with the 2 people I was sharing a room with (both of them in their pajamas) ordering a cup of tea, just because. Then tonight I was just settling down to watch the movie they where showing in the hostel, when I got invited to a radiohead laser show in the imax theatre in the science museum. Turned out to be one of my favourite things I’ve done so far.

I’m supposed to be leaving for Japan in the morning, but it looks like the connecting flight I was supposed to catch from LA has been moved forward an hour and a half which doesn’t leave a lot of room to deal with any delays. I need to speak to the travel agent I used and try and get booked on an earlier flight down to LA, otherwise it’s going to be a bit of a mad dash through the airport. Hopefully my next blog entry will be from Tokyo and not from the departures lounge of LAX.

I’ve spent my first night in Seattle in a bar watching the election results come in. All the bars were full of Obama supporters screaming, cheering and applauding every result that came in the democrats favour. When the California result was called (only 10 minutes after the polls closed) the place erupted, there was singing and chanting and the bar owner pored everyone a glass of champagne. The atmosphere was pretty electric.

After Obama made his victory speech a samba band came into the bar and gave 10 minutes of drumming and the bar emptied to follow a street procession down to the market square 1 mile down the road followed by half a dozen police cars. The party conveniently stopped directly outside the hostel. And with screams of “yes we can” I left the party. As I’m writing this another group has came from another direction complete with a brass band. This might just be one of the most memorable nights of my life.