West Coast Road Trip – Part 1

West Coast Road Trip 5

View of the Space Needle

In May, Dan and I embarked on a road trip to the USA. We booked through The American Road Trip Company after getting quotes from a couple of different companies, and doing some side by side research on which one offered the best quality accommodation for the lowest cost. We spent quite a while researching the best places to go and were really pleased with Chris, our road trip organiser, who helped us change some of the durations in specific places and hotels to make it perfect for us.

We flew from Heathrow on British Airways. I’m not really one for flying, but managed to get through the 10h flight to touch down in Seattle at around lunchtime, and made our way to our hotel down town. Here’s my first tip – in the cities, research the areas before you book your hotels. Down town Seattle is a bit like staying in a touristy bit of London; after having a look round Seattle we would have preferred to have been located in the more Bohemian part called Knob Hill (ha!)

West Coast Road Trip 2

Killer whale sign on the waterfront

We had a couple of days in Seattle and managed to pack a lot in. We went up the space needle (a must have for any Grey’s Anatomy fans – but guess what, it’s not even filmed in Seattle..), to the EMP museum which had exhibitions on Nirvana, Jimi Hendrix and loads of nerd stuff that one of the Microsoft founders has bought with his millions, and to Pike Place market. We also started our Zoo road trip, saw seals and greasy otters at the aquarium and got off the bus at the wrong place on our way to the museum of flight. Overall, Seattle’s tourist attractions were some of the best we saw in any of the cities.

West Coast Road Trip 3

Pike Place Market – Seattle

Oh, and we shopped. I think we both realised that it was going to be a lot cooler than we were hoping for, so visited Nordstrom and Patagonia for new jeans and coats.

I bought some NYDJ jeans, an indigo pair and a washed pair, and paid over half of what you can get them for in John Lewis! I also made my first of many visits to Sephora and spent a small amount of money (lol) on new make up – you can see more of that here.

West Coast Road Trip 7 1

Pike Place Market Dungeness Crab

After a super enjoyable start to the trip, many nice meals out and lots of sites seen, we picked up our car (truck) without a hitch on the morning of departure, and made our way to the Bainbridge Island ferry terminal, and into a totally different world of logging, cabins and some of the most beautiful scenery we were to see on our trip.

West Coast Road Trip 10

Eating oysters at the Carpenter & Walrus