Hello again and welcome to the next post on our blog. Last week we were in Seattle, a city known for its lovely weather. No wait, that can’t be right. A city known for its splendid skyline? Theatre scene? Coffee? Ah yes, Seattle: Home of Starbucks coffee. Okay, so maybe Seattle isn’t the most interesting city in the history of mankind, but it isn’t as bad as some people will have you believe. Everything is within walking distance and it took us a whopping five minutes to walk the four blocks to the monorail for the Space Needle. The ride to the needle takes a good part of three minutes, and brings you right to the base of the tower. Even though the Seattle Space Needle is a fairly small tower, the view from the observation deck is nice, especially if the weather is as good as it was when we were there.
After our visit to the Space Needle, we returned to the city center to find the first Starbucks ever. EVER! There’s actually not much I can tell you about this store, except for the fact that it’s ridiculously busy and not very big. Starbucks and Space Needle, yup, I think that sums up Seattle pretty well. We managed to see Puss in Boots 3D later that day and went to sleep early, so we could get up the next morning early to pick up our rental car for our visit to the Boeing factory in Everett/Mukilteo.
The drive to Boeing takes you through the excellent landscape that lies between Seattle and Vancouver (Canada). If Boeing weren’t there, I’d still recommend you drive north, because the nature there is totally worth it. Unfortunately there was no time to stop, since we booked an early tour of the plant. We arrived on time and, after a short security briefing and video, boarded a bus to the immense production hall of the 747, the 777 and the 787. At this time I would love to show you some of the awesome things we’ve seen there, but you’re not allowed to bring any camera’s with you on the tour, so that’s out of the picture ;) Don’t worry though, the tour is cheap, so don’t skip this the next time you’re in Seattle! By the way, did you know that every Boeing 747, 777 and 787 ever constructed, came out of the Boeing factory in Everett? Also, the current iteration of the 777 features engines that have the same diameter as the hull of a 737. Interesting to know, if I do say so myself.
We saw how the three different types of Boeing wide bodies are constructed and were really excited about all the Dreamliner (787) details. Did you know that, according to the tour guide, a 787 is assembled in three days? Awesome, right? All parts for this aircraft are flown in using the four custom build Dreamlifters (heavily modified 747s), which we were allowed to make a picture of after the tour.
After we bought some Boeing merchandise at the gift shop, it was time to drive to 1 Microsoft Way, Redmond. Because it was a sunday, Microsoft was closed, so we weren’t able to spot any famous nerds, but we managed to take some snapshots of the Microsoft headquarters. Just when we drove away from Microsoft, it started to rain and we decided that we had seen enough of Seattle for one holiday.
The next day we flew back south, to San Francisco. The weather was great, so we decided to enjoy the sun and not do too much. Wednesday we took a tour of the city on one of those open-upper-deck busses and, after a few hours, we ended up at Pier 39 where people were busy putting lights in a big Christmas tree. We took a picture as evidence 
Which brings us to today. I realize that today is actually November 5th (happy birthday Stefan!), but to us it still feels a bit like November 3rd, as we’ve been travelling since that day and only just arrived at our hotel in Melbourne, Australia. The flight from San Francisco to Los Angeles was short, but because of the local heavy rain during take-off, we were able to see horizontal rain through the window, which was cool. We arrived at LAX according to schedule and had some time to kill before our Qantas flight would leave.
The past 6 or so years, Yvo and I have seen many different airports. From local dirt strips in the bush, to huge modern international airports in cities around the world. Some airports are great, such as the Beijing airport in China and some airports are not so great, such as the Victoria Falls airport in Zimbabwe. But the worst airport, by far, is LAX. Los Angeles, in my opinion, is a filthy, boring city, but that is really no excuse for having such a bad airport. Everything there is old (especially if you’re flying American Airlines), inefficient and dirty. For instance, if you happen to arrive from San Francisco and have a connecting flight to Melbourne, you will have to walk to a bus. That bus will leave every half an hour on the hour and will take approximately 20 minutes to bring you to the American Eagle hall, whatever that may be. From where you enter that hall, it is a good 25 minute walk to gate 101, where your Melbourne-bound flight departs from. Really LAX, 45 minutes (best case scenario) to transfer between gates?
In hindsight our little quest for the gate wasn’t even the worst part of today’s visit to LAX. After we’d got our push back from the gate, we taxied and waited. And taxied and waited. And taxied and waited some more until finally, some 50 minutes after our push back, we took off from this godforsaken airport. The flight, which was scheduled to take 15,5 hours, was turbulent, so falling asleep proved somewhat difficult. Once over Australia, the pilot announced that our little driving around at LAX had left us short on fuel, so we had to detour through Sydney Airport to take in some additional kerosine. So instead of arriving in Melbourne at 09.05, we arrived at 11.45.
But let’s not focus on the negatives. Passport control only took 10 minutes and our suitcases were already on the carrousel when we arrived at baggage claim. Outside it’s a soothing 29 degrees and we’re about to go out for some lunch/dinner.
