Day 7 – Thursday

Today started out as a lazy day, I slept through breakfast (doh!) however that did mean I could indulge myself in one of my favourite American foods. French Toast. The desk guy at the Hostel (John aka the fountain of all knowledge) recommended ‘The Athenian’ in Pike Place Market. It reminded me of a pub with a cosy café atmosphere. I sat at the counter, and had luscious French toast, coffee, juice and a slice of melon. It was a great breakfast and I loved sitting at the counter chatting to the girl serving, people watching, writing my diary and having my coffee refilled for free, I love that.

Later that afternoon my friend Al came back from work and we decided as it was a nice evening we’d drive over to a place called Alki Beach over the bridge in West Seattle. We took a walk on the beach, collected ‘sea-glass’ (fragments of glass worn smooth by the sea) and enjoyed the views of the Seattle skyline over Puget Sound. We sat and watched the sun go down then went for a very nice meal in a Mediterranean restaurant, great Hummus and tasty Moroccan style Aubergine (Eggplant).

When Al and I got back to the Hostel, I got roped into a going Country Dancing with Kevin and Sally and 2 other chaps from the Hostel, Daniel and Karl. Al unfortunately declined as he had to get up early for work. Anyway the 5 of us pile into this taxi and tell the driver the name of the club we want to go to. Problem is he doesn’t know where it is and after much deliberation someone mentions that there’s a gay bar that has Country night. So we end up in ‘Cuffs’ but it’s not Country night, it’s Karaoke! We started out with Goldschlager shots and beer chasers, now a word of warning shots in the US are almost 3 times bigger than shots in the UK. Fortunately or unfortunately depending on how you look at it a number of the patrons chose to sing Country songs so we got our Country dancing in anyway as well as a bit of ‘return to my teens’ headbanging to Guns ‘n’ Roses!

Inhibitions were lost after the 3rd or 4th Goldschlager shots and things got very silly, Sally, Kevin & I decided to demonstrate the test of balance we’d done at the Science Museum the day before. This turned some heads, which is an impressive feat in a gay bar called Cuffs on Karaoke night! We had a fantastic night out, I can’t remember the last time I laughed so much, my face hurt the next day.