Well i've seen some bad public toilets but this....

Giant Caitlin and hobbit Rose!
One word - wet
Pike Place Market
Downtown Seattle
This is possibly the strangest sign I have ever seen...

Rose: On Saturday I had realised I had turned into an American. I had an urge for apple and caramel pie with ice cream, for breakfast. As I said this to Caitlin she went 'oh yeh, why didn't I think of that?'. Saturday was a lazy day. As the Odell parents were still away and had left a house full of tennagers we did not rise from our beds until around 11am. Caitlin's friend Nicole came round and cooked us clam chowder with grilled cheese (it's like a cheese toastie but fried instead of being put into a toastie machine). Apparently this is a very American dish but one I had never heard of. It was extremely tasty but not so good for the old cholesterol levels.

We then did what us girls (and Phil) do best, we went shopping. We went to a mall which had some great clothes shops in it, just my style, but Caitlin managed to talk me out of buying any clothes as she quite rightly pionted out I would have to carry them around for another 6 weeks. Phil, however, was unpersuaded and bought a 'Transformers' t - shirt, see what I mean about the geek status!

That evening we went out with Caitlin's sister Kelly to a Thai restaurant. Olympia is meant to be famous for it's huge variety of Thai places to eat. As one guy said as we were getting onto the plane to Seattle said' You can't swing a dead cat without hitting a Thai restaurant in Olympia'. At the restaurant we had a dish called ' Pud Thai' or something to this effect, which turned out to be be flat, thin, translucent noodles in a sweet and sour sauce. Yummy.

The dishes that Caitlin ordered were unfamiliar to both Phil and myself, so you can hardly blame me for what was to happen next. On this one particular dish there were lots of red, long vegetables which looked like oversized chillis. So I decided to try one in good British manner and as I took a great hunk of it, i realised that my first impressions of the vegetable were true. This was a chilli and not a vegetable that looked like a chilli. I heard somewhere that the smaller the chilli the more powerful the kick. Well not this time. This was a big chilli with a big sting. Half my face went numb and i felt like I'd had a stroke. The motto to this story is if it looks like a chilli...then it is a chilli!

Sunday we went to Mount Rainier National Park. Mount Rainier is the highest mountain in America, I think. Unfortunately, it was grey and spitting that day so Mount Rainier was covered in cloud and fog. However, lower down there were trails that hikers could walk along. I have to describe the toilets at this point as they were so horrific they have to be mentioned. The experience is burnt in my memory forever.

Ok, it's a massive national park so you're probably thinking ' Well what does she expect it's out doors, up a mountain'. Well yes, but if they're going to bother with a toilet they may as well make it sanitary! As I went through the door, there was that unmistakable whiff of public tiolets, unlike any other smell there is. It was pretty roomy, as most things in America are, but as i lifted the lid of the seat, to my horror i was looking straight down a pit, onto bare rocks. I won't go into details about what happened after that but after i had finished i looked for a basin to wash my hands in.... but there was none. Instead there was a moldy box on the wall with faded peeling letters saying ' Hygiene spray'. I probably had more bugs on my hands after i had used this ' spray' than when I had gone in. An OCD sufferer's worst nightmare. But as i left the toilet, still stunned by the trauma I looked at the next victim in the queue. I could have said something, anything to warn them of what they were about to witness but instead I did nothing except walk away, silently.

So enough of the tiolets, we went on a walk and as we started the trail there was a notice warning that due to recent storms parts of the trail may be blocked. We carried on regardless, being the fearless teenagers that we are. After about half an hour of flat ground surrounded by pine trees as far as the eye could see I started to get weary of the trail and slightly disappionted. As our enthusiasm started flagging we came to a dead stop. There below us was a fast flowing river and part of the trail had just collapsed into this river. we then noticed that this had not put off other hikers would had made a trail of footprints going down the side of the rocks into the river. We decided to follow this path. We felt like Ray Mears battling through the though terrain. Our first problem was crossing the river, which was quite deep. Eventually, with the aid of a stick Phil had picked up along the way, ( you know how blokes can be ... ooo a forest, i must have a big stick and hold it like a staff to make me more manly and leader like) we managed to hoist ourselves over the various obstacles in our way. We then had to blance ourselves and walk along a fallen tree trunk to get up the other side of the river bank. We then started walking again but this time up hill and we got higher and higher and higher, but again we only had a thick forest of pine trees for company. After another half an hour of this we got fed up and sat down on a rock to look at the map to see how far we had come. We had only travelled about a finger nail's length of a hand sized trail and got so disheartened by this that we turned round and went back to the car.

Perfect timing as it started raining heavily as soon as we got back to the car, and not even Phil's 'macho stick' would have helped us cross the river. When we got back the Odell parents were home and the household felt complete again, even though Phil and I were relative strangers.

Yesterday we went to Pike Place market with Caitlin's mom after looking for Phil's camera for 40 minutes. Caitlin's mom eventually had the nouse to look in the back of the sofa and low and behold there was Phil's camera (and phone, which he did not realise had gone missing until then). It was great fun but I'll let Phil fill you in on that.

OH SO VERY FISHY

Phil: Still keeping up? Good! Feel free to go and get a cup of tea or something at this point, we have a lot to write about! Yet more incredible scenery and vibrant city life these past few days - it's tough I tell ya. When we're not journeying deep into dark Endor-like forests, we're exploring bustling markets full of enthusiastic Chinese people sellng 'authentic' oriental wares.

So Monday Rose and I went back to Seattle with Caitlin and her Mum. One thing I've noticed is that the sense of distance here is warped compared to Britain. Seattle is seen a 'local' city, but it's about the same distance as Southampton is from London! Everything is really spread out here, like an ice-cube that had melted over a large area. People have a lot space to stretch out. Anyway, we were exploring downtown Seattle, starting with the Pike Place Market. The downstairs is full of loads of eccentric little shops that sell things like antique photographs, magic show props and giant steering wheel size lollypops. Each shop caters for a specific clientele, so if you're interested in Afghanistan textiles, you'll find some here! The upstairs is a covered food market with meat and fish stalls, more art and crafts and a bakery selling amazingly huge cakes! I'm thinking of trying a brownie in every city we visit...Seattle's brownies are very impressive so I'll see how the others compare! We also checked out a famous fish stand where they shout the orders in chorus and throw fish to each other. There's a constant crowd surrounding this stand - not buying anything, just watching theses guys work. We sampled some salmon and it tasted amazing so we bought some to barbeque the next day. Notice the amount of food we write about?

After sampling the delights of the market we headed to the central shopping area, and witnessed a rap battle (I don't know the ghetto term) takng place outside the mall - it was like a scene from 8-Mile come to life! Even a policeman was watching in the crowd - he loved it.

Today we returned to Rainier with better weather to go a little further up the mountain. We went up to the suitably named Paradise - an area famed for spectacular mountain views. An very strange experience it was to drive up the mountain in late May with the temperature in the high teens and be surrounded by snow. I felt like I had stumbled into the Swiss alps - all I needed was a cheery Bavarian named Ludwig wearing lederhosen. Ahem. But yes, the largest snow drifts I've ever seen, and we ate our lunch on a wall surrounded by birds, very Snow White!

Tomorrow we leave for our day and night long train journey to San Francisco! I'm really looking forward to seeing a new part of the country and experiencing a whole new city. And Rose and I have to look after ourselves now! We couldn't have asked for a better start to our trip - I'm the happiest I've been for the last year easily, and I hope the adverntures continue to be as unforgettable as they have in Washington State. All for now,

Phil and Rose x