On a personal level, I'd like to note that this is the first trip I've ever really planned for myself and executed alone. It's certainly not the first time I've flown alone - when I was 14 or 15 I flew to Dallas and back alone. And technically I did plan the trip to Anime Expo/America '94, even drove there, but that was with at least two other people. This trip was the first one where I booked my own hotel, found my own flights, arranged all my own transportation, paid for everything from my own pocket, and did it all without anybody else to consult or hang on to. It was a bit of a growth experience - mainly, I had to get over my fear of never having done it before.

It ended up that I didn't use my hotel reservation. Hotels are fairly expensive in Seattle - when I made my reservation, I was quoted $160 for the first night, $120 each for the next two. After I complained about the prices, Russ and Levi graciously allowed me to share their room. So I canceled my hotel reservation, and packed a sleeping bag instead.

To get to Seattle, Russ and Levi took one flight and I took another. Both of us landed at Sea-Tac within a few minutes of each other, at about 9:50 PST on Friday. I ended up at the "N" gates, a bit off the beaten track from the main terminal. We rendezvoused fairly quickly and by 10:15 we were in a hired car headed for the hotel, courtesy of Levi. We arrived and checked in.

Now, a quick mapping of the area before I start in with pics. The hotel was at Westlake and Aloha, right across the street from South Lake Union Park. The convention center is at 8th and Pike, about 1.2 miles away. Here is a route map between the two - might want to keep that open in another window.



A quick look out the hotel window, roughly NE, at Lake Union and the park. Our hotel room was on the 7th floor, so we got a surprisingly good view. It was astonishingly good weather almost the whole time we were there. It was cloudy in the morning, but it cleared up by about noon both days and stayed like this pretty much all afternoon! Evidently late summer in Seattle can be nice.



Seaplane tours were available (but expensive) from the docks seen at the left edge of the previous picture.



Looking roughly SE up Westlake Ave, we could see the high-rises of downtown up the hill. The building in the foreground was some kind of Dave & Busters-esque nightclub/pool hall/arcade thing. BTW, the clouds in Seattle are not naturally purple-tinted. That's my digicam's image enhancement effect giving everything a slightly higher blue component than normal. You'll notice this effect several times.

After finding some tourist maps to get our bearings by, we all decided we were hungry, and hit the streets to hunt dinner.

There really is no better way to get to know a city than to get it under your feet. Over the next two days, we would walk around this part of Seattle many times. As we walked, we saw many things. Here are the ones I liked enough to take pictures of...

(You can follow along on your Google map for this next bit.)



The Original Nerdboy posse takes Seattle, yo! ;]

We walked up Westlake, following the trolley tracks, to the corner of Republican. There was a funky antiques shop here. One of the antiques in the window was...



A Big Boy! For those of you born after the Carter administration, Big Boys were a chain of burger joints common in the late 70's. Each one was named for its owner ("Joe's Big Boy", "Kip's Big Boy", "Azar's Big Boy", etc) and each had one of these fiberglass statues out front.



A block further up, some guy was riding a Segway.



As we walked up Westlake, we had several excellent views of the Space Needle. Didn't have time this trip to check it out. Particularly wanted to see the sci-fi museum.



We saw at least two or three of these amphibious tour buses each day. Always blaring random tour jargon and farting out diesel exhaust.

We continued up Westlake. Russ and I were wearing shorts and t-shirts, since the night was a balmy 60 degrees. Every Seattle native I saw was wearing jeans and a sweatshirt, in spite of the temperature. About ten feet after we crossed Stuart St, a group of passing guys noticed our tourist clothes and jokingly shouted at us, "Hey man, you know where Stuart St is?" "Right back there!" we all said, with varying degrees of sarcasm. ;]

We walked to 5th and Pike, then turned even more uphill for three blocks to the Convention Center. Somewhere around here I saw a poster for a local Harvey Danger show. I hadn't known they were from Seattle!

When we got to the Con Center, they wouldn't let us in without badges. I asked them how to get to Will Call and pick up my badge, but it was closed for the night, and wouldn't open until 8am tomorrow. It was nearly midnight by now, so we shrugged and went looking for an open restaurant.

After quite a bit of walking, we found a place called The Palace Kitchen at the corner of 5th and Lenora. The name was far more pretentious than the decor, but the food turned out to be very good. I had an heirloom tomato plate that was absolutely delicious. Russ ordered a goat cheese fondue appetizer with lightly fried bread cubes, which was also amazing. We went for dessert, which was coconut cream pie and also excellent. I had a glass of some NZ Pino Grigio that was quite good, and a glass of a bit over-strong Riesling with dessert. I diluted it with an ice cube or two and it turned out to be an excellent compliment.

Sated, we walked back to the hotel. Where I promptly kept Russ awake all night with my snoring.


We got up about 10am the next day, and decided to grab breakfast at Pike St Market, a famous open air market in Seattle. We walked up Westlake for a while again, but then cut right on Pine st, heading towards the water.



A few blocks later the street dropped off suddenly. On the way down, I took a picture of Post Alley, not knowing that we'd be back here later.



I think the smaller north end is the really cool end of Pike St Market. The main entrance is about two blocks south, but down here there are a bunch of these little white tents where local farmers sell organic fruits, veggies, mushrooms, all sorts of good stuff. Russ got some raspberries and blackberries that looked mouth-watering.



There's also a small park down here, right by the water's edge.



Looking south towards downtown, I got this shot. As soon as I saw it, I knew this one was going to be good. But I didn't expect the reflection off the building. With pictures like this, who needs Photoshop?

Time to go inside the market...



Had to hold the camera above my head to get this one. This is what it looks like inside. Jammed with people in the middle, booths on either side selling all kinds of stuff. Mostly fresh cut flowers, in this picture.



Pike St market is famous for throwing fish at customers. No, really! If you buy a fish, they give you a big piece of butcher paper, and then throw the fish to you from behind the counter! I saw them do it a couple of times. One person dropped their fish - silly person. ;]



I knew this picture wasn't going to come out right. :P The scale is all wrong. The lobster tails were, honest to god, about from the ball of my wrist to the corner of my elbow. The sign is not lying, those are the biggest frikkin' lobster tails I have ever seen in my life. The King Salmon in the background were as big as my thigh. Seriously. Knee to hip. 70 lbs easy. Perfect for smacking around idiots on IRC!



Getting near the north end now, I slipped out the back of the market and took a picture of the bay. Some guy was parasailing behind a power boat. You can see the boat's wake at the bottom of the picture.



Looking farther south, you can see the cranes of the shipping yards, and at the far left of the picture, Seattle's two sports stadiums. The clouds are *super*, thanks for asking!!



And then we came out of the main entrance. Just before we walked out, I saw a pastry counter and bought myself a $4 apple turnover bigger than my hand. Mmmm... gigantic apple turnover.



Walking just a bit north, we rounded the corner...



...and found Post Alley again. Russ got a crab roll at this little cafe in the alley. It looked amazingly good. I horked down the last of my apple turnover.

It was a good start to the day. We walked back inland, to the convention center, and spent the day at PAX. (Check the next section for pictures of that.)


In the evening, we went out to sushi. I had been on my feet for about 7 hours, running on only the apple turnover I had eaten at Pike St. When we sat down, I promptly drank a 24 oz bottle of Sapporo in less than ten minutes on an empty stomach. Look for the hilarious results in Russ's Flickr set.

Incidentally, being drunk near sea level is a whole different experience. I didn't get dizzy, I didn't slur, I barely felt it. About the only thing that did happen is that I was flushing a lot more than normal. I had been told before that it was going to take a lot more to get me drunk at low altitude, but actually feeling the extreme blunting of alcohol's effect was impressive.

The restaurant was Levi's pick from a previous trip to Seattle, Wasabi Bistro. I can now officially say that I am totally ruined on Denver sushi. Nothing I have ever had in Colorado has ever (and probably will ever) live up to that. Russ says he's only ever had better sushi once, in San Francisco. My god it was good. Our waiter was awesome too, he had some excellent recommendations on sake and kept us happy the whole evening. After tip it came out to just under $90 a person. A bargain at twice the price, says I!

On the way to Wasabi Bistro, we passed another place. I believe it was called Wahn? But we didn't end up there. I wonder if Russ and Levi went back on Sunday night, while I was catching my plane home?




Let's talk turkey! The con was great - I bet the E3-tards are jealous now. In addition to the main hall, there was a big room with, I believe, 400+ networked PCs for LAN gaming, eight or ten rooms full of widescreen TVs and consoles and games to check out and play, some hilarious panels, and generally everything I enjoy wasting a weekend doing.



I don't have many pictures of the actual con center, but here's one I took of the main expo hall entrance. As usual my digicam is playing its normal "scale fail" game, but you can see that the main entrance doors are twice as tall as the people going in, and you can extrapolate from there. Big!



The first of a few notable cosplayers. This joke is getting old, but it's still got a little mileage left in it.



This picture so utterly fails to capture the sheer unadulterated WIN that this guy's MasterChief costume was. It was twice as good as the one at the Bungee booth. The rifle was also about ten times as good as it looks here.



Scale Fail in full effect here. This was the booth babe for the game X-Blades. She was 6 feet tall. I stood beside her and compared heights to make sure. Why is that interesting? Because the character in the game is a ridiculously loli little girl! Make up your mind, guys - do you like the lolis or the amazons? What? "Both"? YOU SICK FREAKS!!! ;]



Far and away the best costume at the con, the Fruit Fucker! (Who? Yeah!) The guy who made it even got his girlfriend to play as Gabe so they could have a Rain-Slick Precipice of Darkness re-enactment.



Brawndo had a booth. Heheh.



Their raffle - let me show you it.



What, I'm actually going to talk about games? Yeah, I'm out of stupid distractions, so it's time.

I've been watching Left 4 Dead for a while. Did not have enough time to stand in line and play it, but I sure hope it'll be good... the plot is basically 28 Days Later in a video game. Based on the Half Life 2 engine.



Gears Of War 2 playable. Another one I didn't have enough time to stand in line for.



I did find time to stand in line at the EA booth to play...



Mirror's Edge! Had my eye on this one for a while too. Are you familiar with Parkour? It's the central game element of this game.



The very start of the game. Looks just as good as the screenshots they've released.



The end of the first level, as Faith is escaping by helicopter. It was harder to control than I thought. I couldn't really get her to sprint when I wanted her to. The shoulder button up/down thing is easy enough though. The disarms are a lot of fun, too. Get close enough to a guy with a gun and he stops shooting at you and tries to pistol-whip you instead. Press triangle and you'll take his gun and knock him down. Very satisfying.



Guitar Hero: World Tour. Their answer to Rock Band. Note the strategically placed black plastic disc to prevent you from getting a look at the drummer's pedal.



You thought shitty lighting and that lame plastic thing were going to stop me? Now the world can look at your pedal.



The drum kit as a whole. Nice double high-hats.



Shockingly, the GH:WT screen is a direct copy of the Rock Band screen.



Back in RockBand2 land, they've gone to a more candy-apple color scheme on the guitars. And are there three buttons under the whammy bar now? Bet you still can't bend notes up. :P



Looks like the same old crap-tacular pedal...



Same old screen.



Back outside the main hall now. Sorry that this is the best picture I have. There was a Rock Band free-play stage set up in the atrium on 2N. It was GREAT. It quickly became my favorite chill-out spot during the con. I didn't get up on stage myself because neither Russ nor Levi are big fans of music games. But for my money, this is still the best idea at the con. I don't think that stage had ten seconds of inactivity for the entire duration of the con.




You may also find Russ's PAX pics amusing.