A large
city in
Washington State, where I have the
good fortune to
live. Seattle happens to be the home of
Starbucks,
Amazon.com, and
Microsoft (well, Microsoft is technically in
Redmond, which is across
the lake from Seattle), but don't
hold it against us.
Seattle has a reputation for getting a lot of rain, but that depends on how you look at it. In inches, it doesn't get any more than most cities. However, there are a lot of days where it rains just a little, and even when it's not raining, it's often overcast. On the plus side, it hardly ever snows.
For some reason Seattle has become a catch phrase for people interested in the whole WTO and free trade versus fair trade issue. Maybe it had something to do with the riots. They were interesting to watch on TV, lots of policemen in black riot armor looking like Darth Vader, but I wouldn't want to have been tear gassed.
The most interesting neighborhood in Seattle is probably Fremont, which has a life-size statue of a troll clutching a real VW bug (under a bridge, of course), a statue of Lenin imported from the ex-Soviet Union, and a rocket ship. Other tourist attractions are the Space Needle and the Pike Place Market, where you can watch them throw fish.
Seattle is definitely the most beautiful city in the world.