Welcome to the USA

Hi All, all lonely three of you... 4 when you count a lovely mysterious reader! haha

So as you would have guessed, I am currently in Seattle, Washington! The Journey from LAX to Seattle was pretty easy. speInt a couple of hours lying on the floor in Terminal 3 wishing I hadn't consumed the two largest pancakes of my life only 20 minutes earlier! See pancake photos! I put the asprin in the photo so you could guage the scale of the light fluffy deliciousness that was pancakes from Gladstone's Seafood Restaurant. I think the pancakes tasted so much better after the plane food! lol

There may have been a side of Bacon in there somewhere, but I use the word bacon very very loosely. It has a very strange smokey flavour, all looks the same, but by god it's crispy, which totally makes up for all its strange points!

So after arriving in Seattle we were met by Dan, Eloise's cousin. So a little about our hosts... Dan and Kristine are both professors at Washington University, and they both are world renouned experts in their fields. They have a house overlooking Puget Sound in Mukilteo, which is about 45 minutes drive outside Seattle city. It is truely an amazing house, lots of glass, with one of the most incredible views of any house I have been in!

Part of the view of Puget Sound, you can literally see all of this from the hot tub!

After some much needed sleep, Eloise and I went into the uni this nmorning with Dan and Kris, and got the grand tour of Washington University, which is truely an incredible campus. It's absolutely huge with the most amazing builings and lecture theatres!

Dan then dropped Eloise and I up to the university shopping precinct, and we spent some time wandering around the shops!

We hit up Victoria Secret and Sephora and a few other places like Juicy Couture, Restoration Hardware (OMG I'm in LOVE). We went through GAP and H&M and a bunch of boutiques and drug stores. I am amazed at how very different all our brands are for every day items when compared to the US. They don't have any panadol or nurofen or anything like that, everything is Advil (which comes in 100 different types), and 400 other brands of pain killers we don't get in Australia. When it comes to the cosmetics and beauty/hair products, we do have alot of the same stuff. Things like cereal and breads are interesting, they have cinamon toast, blueberry toast, wheat-a-bix and a few other strange items. I had my first tootsie roll (little chocolatey lolly) and will probably pass if offered one again! Yuk!

So after all our shopping yesterday Dan and Kris picked us up and took us to dinner at a restaurant called Ivars, which seems to be a bit of a thing around here, they specialise in salmon type dishes, and have a very native american indian feel to them. Really great service which was awesome, and the food was lovely!

Thats all for now!

SJ xx