Family tree

Realizing that I'm not quite as young as I used to be, and that hazardous marathon night-drives aren't for me anymore, and that the 9 hour jet lag does stuff to your brain, I decided to drop the plan of driving straight up to Canada, and relax a bit in the Evergreen State.

After a monstrous breakfast at Seattle Tacoma International House of Pancakes (or IHOP as they call it, it actually took me 3 months of living in the States to realize they were the same thing, even though I knew both served pancakes...), I drove into Seattle to try Seattle founded Starbucks coffee. It didn't take long to find one. I've been told Seattle has a Starbucks on every corner, it's not far from the truth! I'm not sure I bought my cup at the original one, but it tasted coffee, and it was scolding hot, unlike the body temperatured one I'm used to get at my local coffee house at Carl Berner.

Done exploring Seattles Starbucks, I set off to find some relatives. Turns out that the streets of north Seattle are called 1st, 2nd, 3rd, and so one, avenue. What I failed to notice is that they are called 2nd Avenue NW, NE, SW and SE, which means of course, North, South, East and West. I just found me a part of town with numbered avenues and started driving down along the numbers, in the complete wrong part of town. After giving up on Rand McNallys road atlas (although he has proven to be of great help on many of my previous trips, and I am sure I will have good use for him later on this trip too), I downloaded Google maps for my cellphone, and was able to figure out (within a range of 3 miles) where I was, and where I should go. Not caring about international charges on 3G traffic, I found the street and my relatives. In order to protect the identities of the parties involved neither their house nor their faces will be pictured, but a picture from the view just a little up the road will come later, when I have figured out how to convert RAW pictures to blog-usable pictures.

APOLOGY: To all the worried people in the neighborhoods I slowly trawled, I beg my deepest apologies. I am not a burglar mapping out what houses to rob, and what families were on vacation. I am just a normal lost tourist looking for an address.