Retake Montlake

Perth to Melbourne. Melbourne to Los Angeles. Los Angeles to Seattle.

We've designed an itinerary to fill in some of the gaps from our last trip and minimise the number of times we cross our tracks. Seattle is the only place we're visiting for a second time, but with a very good reason. More on that in the next post (i.e. tomorrow), but rest assured that Seattle itself isn't the attraction.

Our plans were for Sunday, so we arrived on Saturday afternoon. Fortuitous, as it allowed us to catch some college football, and we'd been lamenting the fact that we won't make it to an NFL game. We didn't realise until much later that "some college football" was actually the opening of the brand new Husky Stadium, home of the University of Washington Huskies.

Husky Stadium

The $280 million rebuild began in 2011, after the original stadium, built in 1920, started to fall apart. It seats 70,138 people and is recognised as one of the loudest stadiums in the country. Some even claim that the mexican wave originated here in 1981.

The best part of the stadium is what you can't see from our cheap seats - the view. Situated on the Montlake Cut, where Lake Washington meets Puget Sound, those lucky people on the other side of the stadium can see both the Cascade and Olympic mountain ranges. I should point out that we bought our cheap tickets at an exorbitantly inflated price, such was the level of demand to see the Huskies "retake Montlake".

The obligatory marching band

Third down

The Huskies brought home a decisive win over the Boise State Broncos, with a final score of 38-6.

The real reason for this write up is to share a remarkable tale of synchronicity. During the second quarter I turned to Daniel and wondered aloud how the netball team I've been coaching did at their game, which would have finished some hours previously. The next day, courtesy of an email from the team manager, I learnt they'd also won. And the score? 38-6. Awesome.