Trip to Seattle

Have you ever had this feeling that things are moving so fast and you've encountered so much in a very small time span, of several day, that it seems like its been weeks!
And at the same time, for those several days, you are in your own world with a small group of people and despite the fact that the settings keep changing, you pay very little attention on things happening outside of your little world for that period of time.

Well this past weekend has been like that!
It is probably one of the rare occasions where people from different places, far distances away, come together and leave a memorable experience that is difficult to duplicate.

This past weekend I went to Seattle to visit some friends. It was a big reunion and a weekend of many firsts. First off, on friday we went to a Halloween party; although we didn't stay long, we got to see some nice costumes and observe how some of the microsofties party.
We then went to a Halloween rave: it was my first rave, props to Ilya for telling me about it, getting the tickets and everything. It was amazing; everyone was dressed up in costumes, although some of us weren't :), the people provided for a friendly atmosphere and the music was fantastic! Some of the biggest dj's came to spin good trance music: the lineup included Ferry Corsten, Marco V and Nu Energy. Amazingly the entire event was at a stadium (not sure baseball or basketball); it was very surprising to see an event like this allowed to be hosted in a stadium. There was also a good number of attractive girls, many of whom were approachable. All my friends had a good time, as did I.

The next day was appropriately more moderate: as the saying goes, all good things in right proportions! In the morning my friend Diego picked me up from Eli's place and we got it all started with a good breakfast at IHOP. We then did some touristy things, including a visit to the climb :), a troll statue and a tour of the old market. It was hard to pay attention to all the things around us, because we were often preoccupied with solving some interesting puzzles; poor Svetlana was probably not very happy with us at the time. We ended up separating late afternoon and me and Eli spent the rest of the evening going around the city. We made a few stops; I met some nice people having a good time dancing to some oldies, and got to see a lot of interesting costumes: the scooby doo gang was my favorite. It was also good to see more of the city and some of the sketchy areas to get a better perspective on the people and general life in Seattle.

I have to say that in general I didn't find the city too appealing. I will admit though that there were a few nice areas to visit. Seattle does seem to have some similarity to Toronto in a few respects.

Sunday started with some really good mexican food for breakfast with Eli and his friend. After that I've rejoined Diego, Svetlana and Ilya who arrived from his overnight trip to Vancouver. We hung out at an Indian restaurant and walked around a bit in Seattle before going for a tour in the big Amazon building, which is quite impressive and stands on a hill providing for some beautiful view. Earlier on, I was exposed to the MS campus, which is rather huge. After that we went out for a walk in West Seattle overlooking the city at night.

It was then time to depart and just like that the weekend was over; it took some time to say our goodbyes and reluctantly we left the weekend behind us.

It was one incredible weekend!