Travel – Page 21 – The Bald Heretic – Short, bald dude with a goofy beard

You know, food tastes much better when you’re revolving

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The ultimate destination on Tuesday was the Seattle Space Needle.

Built for the 1962 World’s Fair, The Space Needle is 605 feet (184 m) high and 138 feet (42 m) wide at its widest point and weighs 9,550 tons. In other words it quite large. Not Eiffel Tower large, but large enough.

The building you see in the first picture is the Experience Music Project, a construct designed by Frank Gehry who is well known for such notable architectural marvels like the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, Spain and the Walt Disney Concert Hall in downtown Los Angeles.

Upon arrival we were ushered into an elevator and whisked to the observation deck. The weather is so good and the sky is so clear we had a great view of the surrounding area. Puget Sound, Mt. Rainier, the downtown cityscape was all in clear view.

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We didn’t have much time on the observation deck before we were notified that our table was ready.
Moving into the dining room we were seated in short order and I just took in the view.

The restaurant revolves once every 47 minutes so during the course of the meal you get the full panorama plus a little extra.
Our reservation put us there in time to enjoy the single most spectacular sunset I have ever had the pleasure to witness.

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Once the sun goes down the restaurant transforms into a very cool space

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We all had a lovely dinner followed by the most interesting desert I have ever experienced, the World Famous Lunar Orbiter which is basically an ice cream sunday that spews smoke all over your table when it is served. It’s really quite fun and it even makes a 60’s sounding space noise that’s hard to describe. It’s been a Space Needle favorite since it opened.

After dinner we retired back to the observation deck and enjoyed the view

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A spectacular evening reconnecting with old friends…

Fremont Troll

My friend Rich and his family took me on a whirlwhind Seattle tour before dinner last night and one of the “must see” attractions is, apparently, the Freemont Troll.

The troll is located under the under the north end of the Aurora Bridge and you just don’t fully grasp the enormity of the sculpture when you first see it.

That is, until you realize that it’s a REAL Volkswagon Beetle in his hand…

Who Needs The Kwik-E Mart?

As you may have heard or read about, many 7-11’s around the country have been remodelled to look like The Kwik-E Mart from the animated television show The Simpsons.

As you could probably guess, this is part of a nationwide promotion for the upcoming Simpsons movie.

Sadly, the closest one to home is in Dallas. There is, however, one here in Seattle.

My old friend Rich who I haven’t seen in over 15 years suggested we swing by before our reunion dinner at the Seattle Space Needle.

Ok, I know I am a dork/nerd/geek but I don’t care. I was pretty excited to see this place.

Apu greeted us as we entered

Ok, he doesn’t LOOK like Apu, but I think he DOES sort of look like Hank Azaria who does the voice work for the Apu character. “Apu” was having the time of his life, getting photographed and declaring himself WORLD FAMOUS! Customers were coming in and taking his picture and offering money to buy his uniform. And yes, as we left he said “Thank you, come again!” We died laughing. It was like going to a rock concert featuring a band you love and hearing them play your favorite song as the encore.

The store was stocked to overflowing with many products you would expect to find at the local Kwik-E Mart.

Krusty-O’s

Donuts with sprinkles

Buzz Cola

A Squishee machine!

And sundry items of various humor

I was tempted by many things, but settled on a single Buzz Cola and a Radioactive Man #1

Best – Promo – Ever

Seattle – First Impressions

Arrived in Seattle with no problem. Got checked into the hotel and had some time to casually look around a bit.
I’m happy to report the whereabouts of all the missing Texas sunshine.

Yay for being in an environmentally conscious blue state!
Cab from the airport was natural gas powered, company office uses real coffee cups and does not have ANY plastic utensils of any kind.
Each desk has a trash can AND a recycle bin. Seattle makes Austin look like an eco-terrorist.

Did the Underground Seattle tour.

That was interesting. I heartily recommend it for any history buffs visiting this city. No gnomes or trolls, I swear!

Back above ground, it’s pigs everywhere. No, not living swine. You know how in Houston we have those painted bulls? And more recently the painted boots? In Seattle it’s pigs…

No one I have talked to can explain why a pig…

Later in my wanderings I discovered this street sign:

That wouldn’t work in Houston. Our drivers can’t seem to read the most rudimentary speed limit signs or interpret street-lights. How would they ever understand where to park with a sign like this? Of course it could be intended as a deterrent to those who might be wanting to drive/flee/move or relocate to Canada…

There’s a seaplane port outside my hotel window

Lastly, I am seeing a lot of Native American art and artifacts. On my way to dinner last night I caught sight of this awesome totem pole. Pardon the size:

Travel-wear

When travelling overseas, communication can be a problem. Not a huge problem as many people in Europe do speak English but still, in an emergncy you don’t want something like a language barrier to get in the way of what you need.

If our cab driver, as well as some of the staff in the hospital in Brugge, Belgium spoke no English the Maiming Of The Nose story would be a much more painful anecdote.

For those that might be interested in being doubly prepared on there travels I have found the perfect accessory!

The Traveler’s Phrase Book T-shirt

The tee shirt has a phrase book printed on it: point a finger at the pictogram you need and then point it twice at the question mark, which means, “Where is it?”

Available for purchase at store.artlebedev.com/catalog/t-shirts/2007/phrase-book

Thanks to Laanba for the head’s up!

Globetrotter

One thousand pounds for an elephant?
It’s outrageous! You’ve been diddled.

Undoubtedly.
But it’s not often one needs an elephant in a hurry.

—-

I’ll be headed to Seattle next week on business. I’ve always wanted to visit. The best friend of my youth, Rich Davis, is living up in Washington State and we’ll be getting together for dinner one evening. I haven’t seen him in over 12 years…maybe 15. We were pretty inseparable for most of our teenage years. People used to call us Heckle and Jeckle.

Pike Place Market, a cup of coffee at the original Starbuck’s and dinner at The Space Needle are all on the agenda.

When I get back I have a short time before I re-pack and catch a flight to Galway Ireland to participate in an IT project. We’re migrating the two international corporate NT domains. That should be fun. As luck would have it, Owen Finn will be there on one of the days I’m visiting so I’ll get to meet his family. I’ll also be entertained by members of the “Irish Contingent” on their home turf.

I’m taking a few extra days to take in the sights.

After that it’s only a few months before Cynthia and I head of to Spain for our 30 day adventure that we’ve been planning for the last year.

Capturing the moment II

As I mentioned earlier, getting the good self portraits while on vacation was a concern. That lead us to purchase a compact digital point and shoot camera.

Fellow photo bug Laanba from over at photine.net read the post and took the time to make a comment suggesting I have a look at the Xshot, something she had heard mentioned on the The Digital Photography Show podcast.

I went to the web site and had a look. What a great idea! Basically it’s a mono-pod that allows you to hold your compact camera up to 37 inches away from you. It’s light weight and when retracted will fit in your pocket, making it super easy to carry around.

Being the technology radio personality that I am I decided to contact the company to ask about the possibility of getting a review unit. The folks at Xshot were happy to oblige and I received it last week.

It’s very cool and I will be adding this to the travel kit for our trip to Spain. It will certainly be a bonus to be able to get those adorable couple shots in front of all those scenic landmarks.

To give you an example, here’s a hand held shot:

Now with the Xshot:

And for your ultimate avatar or profile pic at your favorite social networking site, compare these crops:

An added benefit to getting the camera out some distance is the effects of the flash tend to be way less harsh. And think about the slimming angle shots you can accomplish! A must have for Myspacers!

Travel planning – capturing the moment

In reviewing the pictures from our two previous trips one thing stands out and that’s the fact that there’s simply too few pictures of Cynthia and I together.

Sure, she has her camera and I have my camera so we’ve got some pictures of each other, but the thought of handing hundreds of dollars worth of technology to a complete stranger causes one to pause. For the sake of a romantic shot of the two of us in front of (insert cool landmark here) we are risking them dropping, or even worse, stealing the camera.

And holding a full SLR at arms length doesn’t work very well either.

Then I had a brainstorm.

I came up with the idea of purchasing a used and inexpensive point and shoot camera. The idea being that it’s something that can easily be held at arm’s length so we can get the self portraits of ourselves and it’s cheap enough so that if we do decide to let someone take our picture and they drop it or run away we’re not out that much.

It occurred to me that the secondary camera market must be huge and that by being willing to sacrifice a few mega-pixels and some features, a few year old used point and shoot digital camera should be pretty inexpensive and readily available.

We headed over to The Camera Exchange and I was able to pick up a used Nikon Coolpix 4100 with a 1 gig memory card for a song (as in well under a $100 song)!

I’m sure I could have gotten even cheaper on Ebay or from Craigslist or even the Chronicle Classifieds but this was better for me as I like to put my hands on technology before I buy it, even if it’s cheap cheap cheap.

The camera weighs next to nothing, runs on AA batteries so there’s no charger which makes it a breeze to transport. 4 mega-pixels, 3X zoom, super easy to use.

It’s PERFECT!