Another wonderful holiday

By only posting here when we've had a holiday, it may seem like that's all we do.  But this holiday was well-earned all round.
We left here on the only flight out to Hawaii, the dreaded 11.30pm take off which gets in to Honolulu at 5.30am, and arrived in San Francisco at 9.30pm the next night.  You can imagine what fun that day was for everyone.  The first highlight was opening the taxi door at the hotel and just about tripping over a guy lying face down on the footpath with his head down a grate.  Classy.  The hotel room was tiny, with only a very small window looking out onto another building, so we spent as little time in there as possible.  No problem, as we did heaps in SF.  After an hour and two visits to the Information Centre, we figured out the public transport and headed down to Fisherman's Wharf and Pier 39.  There were masses of tourists everywhere, speaking every kind of language (isn't it funny how your ear goes straight to the Kiwi/Aussie speaker though?).  We did an hour tour around the city centre in an electric refurbished cable car to get our bearings, and that was as close as we got to the real thing - the queues were enormous. 
The next day my cousin Murray, who's lived in SF for 20 years, came to take us out, and he was an excellent tour guide.  We went over the Golden Gate Bridge, decided not to stop and look at the big trees at Muir Wood, and went up Mt Tamalpais instead to get awesome views.  Taine got pressed in to helping set up the old Scenic Railway exhibit, and he got to take off the brakes, push the car out and put up the flags.  It was a gorgeous day up high, but you could see the fog sitting over the bay below.  Lunch at Sausalito, which is just like Devonport, Days Bay, and any other little place across a harbour from a big place, then photos at the Bridge.  Taine was getting a bit restless by this stage, so we went to the playground in Golden Gate Park, where he happily climbed on a random stone thing for an hour while the rest of us froze.  It was a bitterly cold wind, and we foolishly hadn't believed everyone who told us how cold SF would be.  After the grown ups had had enough, we went back to North Beach, the Italian section, for dinner, via the Full House opening credits park.  Matt mocked me, but there were tons of tourists there all having their photos taken too.
The next couple of days we went back to the Piers to do Ripley's Believe it or not (too gross for me, Taine loved it) and the Wax museum, went to Chinatown, caught the bus to the Castro district, where we saw every gay stereotype within a two block radius, and had a fabulous day at the Exploratoreum Science Museum.  The buses were so easy to navigate and we did heaps of walking too.  Our hotel was within an easy walk or bus to Union Square, but the neighbourhood was a bit dodgy with lots of homeless and mad people talking to themselves.  Well, I thought it was dodgy until I had to go to the laundromat in the Tenderloin district (which I seem to remember Murray telling us not to go into).  It was scary.  I felt very clean and underdressed - I was dressed normally, but everyone else seemed to have five layers of clothing on and carrying bags and blankets.  It was amazing how a neighbourhood can change completely just by crossing a street.
Next step was flying up to Seattle and picking up the rental car to go to Great Wolf Lodge, south of Olympia.  GWL is a giant indoor water park/hotel, with 4 scary slides, a couple of middle slides, kiddies pool, wave pool, climbing frames, basketball pools, big buckets that empty umpteen gallons of water on you when you're not looking ...  Taine and Matt loved it although Seth was a bit little to really get into it.  Our room even had a wolf-den bunk bed room and Taine could lie in bed and play PlayStation.  Bliss for an 8yr old.  We then had a long day driving to Leavenworth in the Cascades, via Snoqualmie Falls.  Leavenworth is this cute Bavarian town, where we had spatzle and schnitzel for dinner, served by wenches carrying three steins in each hand, listening to an accordian player.  Fabulous.  And another long day driving up beside the Columbia River into Canada to Vernon, BC.  We were staying with Damain and Robyn from Blenheim, but they had no furniture (sleeping on airbeds and no couch kind of no furniture) so we went up to a nearby ski resort for the weekend. It was a great big house with an outdoor spa pool which looked out over miles and miles of forest and mountains - very Canadian, although I still didn't get to see my bear.  Matt had been completely neglected for his birthday so far, but Robyn had very kindly got him a cake, and after a few beers he was happy.  We spent those days hanging out by the very refreshing lake and generally chilling, doing laundry, cooking, drinking, chatting, ...  Was just what we needed to relax.
Back on the road to Seattle, overnighting in Bellingham right opposite a mall, so I got some more shopping time (yay Gap).  Our hotel in Seattle was in a great location, a 15 minute walk to the Pike Markets, two blocks to the monorail and with a real cafe over the road.  A wee coffee diversion (coffee break, ha ha):  I could not believe how many Starbucks there were in San Francisco, then we got to Seattle, where there are over 100 within a five mile circle.  All selling the crappest coffee ever made.  Poor Matt couldn't find a cup of tea to save himself either, so we were both suffering.  Then we had this fab cafe over the road from the hotel, but instead of giving you a number, they took your name. I got sick of saying Sharyn 5 times, so I would just use any name (thanks nieces).  I think they were on to me after a couple of days, once they began to recognise me.  'weren't you ...?'
Our first night Taine and I went to Safeco Park to see the Seattle Mariners play the Toronto Blue Jays at baseball.  I admit now, I was so wrong about building a waterfront stadium in Auckland - best thing they could have done in hindsight.  Like Wellington, it was a short walk from the city centre, an eye-catching building and great public transport if you needed it.  Sorry Auckland (and the Thomas' who are stuck living over the road from Eden Park).  Now I like test cricket, so I have quite a high tolerance for boring sport, but nothing could prepare me for the tedium of baseball.  Thank goodness the organizers have realised what a boring sport it is, and there was lots of entertainment between innings.  And lots of food to eat (blue cotton candy, cheese fries (uggh), metre long red licorice, icecream dots).  Taine was a bit bored to begin with, but once he realised the cameras were picking up people dancing in their seats, he was away, doing his best Michael Jackson moves at every opportunity.  He didn't get on the big screen, but had a great time anyway.  He truly thought he was going to catch a ball hit into the crowd as well, and one guy 10 feet from us did, but that was as close as it got.
My first impression was Seattle was just another small city (500,000 in the greater area) but there was heaps and heaps to do: the markets, the aquarium, the monorail, Space Needle, music museum with a great SciFi section and Avatar display, the zoo, a harbour cruise, a big lake park and lovely shops.  But the highlight was a big fountain.  The former Expo site has the International fountain, which shoots water metres and metres in the air fairly randomly, and children (and adults) are actively encouraged to play in it.  We had to go back twice, the second time with Taine's togs, and it entertained us all for hours.
Seth was an angel all trip, with no middle of the night screams.  His routine got completely shattered, and he managed to eat all manner of food, from pretzels to pizza to spatzle to salmon with not a lot of fruit or veges in between.  He just loved elevators, as he was guaranteed attention and smiles from strangers.  Basically he charmed everyone with his scrunchy smile.  He does get awfully heavy sitting on your lap on a 6 hour flight though.
We had great weather the whole trip - no rain, and sunny and hot most of the time.  All our accommodation was ready for us, the car didn't break down, we managed to do just about all that we wanted to, although we're definitely  not going to do the Great Road Trip any time soon. 
So Matt's still in Seattle, finishing up BankCamp.  I met his friends/roomies who are a diverse bunch of guys, and it sounds like he's having a great time.   It's a shame we won't be there for graduation, but I've instructed his friends which photos I want.  We had a wander round the UW campus, and it's beautiful, although the rooms are typical student accommodation and I could understand why one of the guys showed up with 10 cans of air freshener.
For some reason I can't load photos on this post, so I'll try later and put them on Facebook as well.
And that's it.  No more holidays for us for a while!