Tuesday was the big day for me to pick up the keys and check out the apartment. I arrived around noon and after wandering around for a bit, finally went in. We had the floor-plan already, so I kind of knew what to expect, but it's always a little different seeing it in person. One of the first things I did was go out onto the balcony to see what our view looked like:
We're on the 5th floor (out of 6) so we have decent elevation. Off to the left is Southeast, where Mt. Rainier is. On a clear day, we may be able to see it. And while that view is good enough for me, we have access to another awesome one. There's a rooftop with chair and a grill, just a couple stories up:
Here you can actually start to make out Lake Washington and the Eastside. This will make for awesome views at night, and is a great space if we have a bunch of people over. While our apartment is fairly spacious, I can imagine it getting packed quickly.
The rest of the week was spent becoming a full-blown resident of Seattle. I got my temporary Washington license, set up utilities, got a bunch of stuff at IKEA and Bed, Bath, & Beyond, and explored things around here. Less than a mile away are open tennis courts and a turf field with nets. All of us play soccer and tennis, so we'll definitely be utilizing that. Our apartment complex also sits right on top of a Safeway, a grocery store seemingly everywhere except the east coast. There's a Starbuck and Subway attached to it, so food is very close-by. Until the movers arrived at the end of the week, though, I was pretty much ordering food with more fast-food than I would have liked.
Overall, things were pretty uneventful until the movers arrived (next blog post). I spent a lot of time in the car going from place to place. It is through this that I dealt firsthand with Seattle traffic. No matter what direction I was going during any time of the day, there always seemed to be traffic. While obviously frustrating, it did give me a good chance to become familiar with the highways.
There are also a lot of different traffic conventions out here. For instance, the speed limit is pretty much 60mph, and so that's how fast people drive. Nobody is going over 70, or even above 65, which makes it hard to rationalize doing it yourself. Additionally, some of the on-ramps are "metered", which means there's effectively a stoplight for the ramp except that it quickly alternates between red and green. Only 1 car is allowed to enter for each green light. Not a bad way to regulate traffic entering the highway, but just a little strange to me. Lastly, there's the HOV (high-occupancy vehicle, meaning you need at least 2 people in your car) lane. While in general this is not new, it's taken to a whole new level here. There's a separate HOV lane for the on-ramp that doesn't need to wait for the metered light. Exits also have HOV lanes. It may not seem like much, been when you're sitting in traffic watching the HOV lane fly by (i.e. this week for me), you'll wish you could use it. Luckily I only have the car for another week or so, and won't be doing much more driving anyway.
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