public humiliation!

Eldan's bachelor party

Photos

I've just set up a Flickr group for our wedding:

http://flickr.com/groups/meldan/

If you take any digital photos (or film photos if you feel like scanning them) at or around the wedding, please consider joining this group and sharing them. It will be a nice thing for us to keep and to show people who weren't able to be there with us.

As a target for the group, we'd really like it if we could manage to get in at least one photo of each person who comes to the wedding. Also feel free to include things that are tangential to the wedding itself, like tourist photos from the people who've come a long way to be with us.

Local news

A few things that visitors to Seattle should be aware of:

• The monorail probably won't be running while our guests are in town.
• You'd be well advised not to eat raw oysters just now, due to contamination in the local oyster beds. Places that serve raw oysters are supposed to switch to other suppliers, but the reason they're normally so good here is that they are from so nearby. Meanwhile cooking does seem to effectively kill the bacteria in question, so there doesn't seem to be any reason to worry about cooked shellfish.
• 10 day weather forecast. Obviously that gets less reliable after the first couple of days, but it should give you some sort of packing guidance.
• Airport security restrictions:
  • General rules at Seattle-Tacoma airport. As far as I know, the same rules apply at all other US airports, but it's worth checking locally.
  • British Airways' rules. These cover people flying from Seattle directly to London; they probably also cover all other flights to the UK, but it's worth checking with the particular airline.
  • For flights from the UK to the US.
• It's forest fire season. We're not likely to be affected in or around Seattle (including the hiking trails that are accessible by bus from here), but it does pay to check the local news or ask around before heading out to any forest area. Right now one of the access roads to Mount Rainier is closed to most traffic because of a fire in that area; I'll be keeping track of that for those who are planning on visiting there (don't worry - the other two routes are unaffected).

And finally: I am very glad that we didn't decide to take the risk of using the Olympic Sculpture Park for our wedding.

Rough Planet addenda

We could have gone on for many more pages in that Rough Planet Guide, but we had to stop somewhere to remain sane and not make the thing too long for anyone to want to bother reading it. Of course, that means we ended up missing some things out that are worth mentioning:

One more restaurant that stands out: Marjorie. The food is great and very varied, the tiny patio is adorable, and the indoors is very welcoming. The best thing here is the chef's whimsical tasting menu: an assortment of whatever the chef feels like sending you, available with meat or in a vegetarian version on request.

Places worth seeing the inside of: the Central Library and the aquarium. I often go to the library to get away from my computer and read, and the more I use it the more I appreciate the inside, while liking the outside progressively less. In any case, it's interesting architecture, and on the interior I mean that in a good way. The aquarium has a distinct focus on local waters, which is what I think makes it worth a visit even though most cities have a decent aquarium. It's being largely rebuilt, which makes it look very uninviting from the outside, but they've managed to do this in such a way that the inside is not disrupted.

Harbour Cruises: of all the really made-for-tourists things in Seattle, the one that we think very highly of is Argosy Cruises. They offer various options; I'd recommend any that include the sea (as opposed to the lakes-only cruise, because the harbour is interesting and the view of downtown from out in the bay is to die for.

And finally, Snoqualmie. This one's only likely to interest people who are Twin Peaks fans, but for those who are: many of the location shots that constitute the fictional town of Twin Peaks were actually filmed in the Fall City - Snoqualmie - North Bend area. You'll have to do some research to figure out what is where, but this site looks like a promising start. You may decide you need a car to get between locations, but if not then you don't need a car to get to the area from downtown Seattle: it's just a matter of taking two buses. The 554 will get you to the Issaquah Park & Ride in about ¾ of an hour, and the 209 takes you through Fall City, Snoqualmie and North Bend. Do check timetables though, because the 209 only runs once an hour.

Rough Planet Guide: multimedia special section!!!

We're about to start sending our custom guide to Seattle to guests who have told us they are coming. So if you've told us you're coming, and don't receive this soon, then please RSVP again because it probably means your first reply didn't get through. If you haven't replied yet, please do because knowing exactly how many people will be here will help us finalise arrangements.

The guide contains a lot of www addresses, which obviously are not all that useful on paper, so here they all are as links you can follow to save some typing (we didn't want to put the guide itself online because we prefer not to publish our address together with details of when we'll be out of the country...):

Getting here
Airporter bus information and bookings
map from bus stop to Ramada Inn
map from bus stop to Sixth Avenue Inn

General information on the web
http://www.cityofseattle.net/tour/intro.htm
http://del.icio.us/eldan/Seattle
http://lostinseattle.com
http://seattle.metblogs.com/
http://seattlest.com/
http://www.thestranger.com/seattle/Home
http://www.thestranger.com/seattle/Suggests
http://seattle.citysearch.com/

Getting around
über-nerdy guide to Seattle's street layout
Neighbourhoods & parks map
region map
Bus trip planner
Bike rentals
location of the Black Bottle
location of the Edgewater

Restaurants
Cascadia
The Holy Tom Douglas Empire
Wasabi Bistro
Teapot Vegetarian House
Bamboo Garden
where to find cheap and tasty Ethiopian and Vietnamese food

Bars
The Viceroy
The Elysian Brewing Company
The Six Arms

Coffee
Caffe Vita
Espresso Vivace
Coffee shop with wireless internet access locator

Tourist stuff
Underground Tour
Seattle Art Museum
Klondike Gold Rush Museum
Moss Bay Kayaks
Seattle parks
Ballard Locks
Hikes accessible by bus
Mount Rainier (see also my attempt at getting a tour group together for Mt. Rainier - let me know if you're interested)
Olympic Peninsula

Questions or suggestions? Please comment on this post.