Seattle

In March, I was lucky enough to go on a work trip to visit Microsoft in Seattle. It was all a bit last minute, but of course I was happy enough putting up with that.

We stayed in Kirkland on the shores of Lake Washington. The lake was beautiful and great for a run in the morning. Sadly part of the run had to be along the road as they had built properties right up to the shore line.

Fortunately there some time in between meetings to catch up with old friends Rob and Brad for a beer in Redmond.

The rest of the week were meetings apart from the last day. Our men at Microsoft, Jim and Frank, gave us a tour of Seattle. First stop Jim's old university and some fantastic Cherry blossom:

It was at this point I really regretted just packing the point and shoot camera :-/

Panoramic views of the city. I was designated driver for the trip and late the night we drove out an hour from the city to the twin peaks hotel and waterfall. It was creepy as all hell out in the country and we wasted a good half hour trying to find a casino in the middle of nowhere. After that we tried to drive into the city. There were a lot of road closures and even with the GPS sat nav, it took us 7 wrong turns before we got there! We milled round the the tower, the needle, and popped into a grunge bar. Sadly the photos didn't really come out :-/

The first ever Starbucks. Honestly in those window panes above the shop it says Starbucks, but the reflection blew it right out.

The Australian guy with us, Don, had never seen snow. So we spend the last afternoon driving out to the nearest Ski resort, we went back and had a look at the waterfall in the day, which turned out to be much more of a diversion than it looked on the map!

The ski resort was closed when we got there, even though there was snow on the slopes. Maybe it's just a weekend thing. Don, Andy and Dan:

There were a couple of people around filming a single snowboarder. A skidoo would take him far enough up to get a run up at the jump. Once he got to the jump there were several people taking pictures and video of him. I was most impressed by the skill of the model helicopter pilot that would also follow him in mid air. I can olny assume they had a camera attached to it as well.

Bottom of the jump and more camera crew dotted about:

Seattle's a really lovely city - shame the annual rainfall probably is more than the UK's!