I know I'm supposed to be doing this 'budget holiday' thing but this happened by mistake. I didn't notice it when I was booking my flights for Hawaii but somehow I ended up with a first class ticket. It was only for the 20 minute flight from Kauai island to Honolulu to connect for my flight to the mainland.

I checked in at the first class desk for the first time ever in my life and the woman told me there was a first class lounge near the gates. The Lihue airport is another small one with a handful of gates so it wasn't really exciting in the normal waiting area. After a couple of passes I spotted the tucked-away door to the lounge but I couldn't understand why there was a numeric keypad on the door. Confused, I started walking away and glanced again at my boarding pass. I saw the check-in lady had written '36*' on it and I had just ignored it because people are always marking the pass as I pass through security and boarding, but I remembered her telling me about the lounge just as she was writing that. The inner detective in me spoke up and made me walk back to the door and type in 3-6-* on the keypad. Click. The door opened and I was in.

I found a relatively small room with several comfy chairs. But, best of all, was the free coffee and soft drinks that I could, and did, help myself to. Aside from the free drinks I had a quiet room in which to relax in comfort and read my book until the member of staff came to announce the flight was ready to board, at which point I could pre-board with all the other special people.

I was in the front row. Not the very front - that would make me the pilot - but the first one in the main cabin. I was sat next to a young woman with a baby but, luckily, she was well behaved the whole time. I mean the baby there. Actually they were both well behaved and I had a nice conversation with her. This time I mean the woman, not the baby. I carefully avoided being specific about the baby's gender because I didn't want to upset the mother by calling her a 'he'. And I was right to do so because the little baby girl was in blue clothing, which threw me off.

I changed in Honolulu after my too-brief experience of first class and got onto my next plane with all the other Joe Nobodies in economy. I found my seat and somehow again I was sat next to a young woman with a baby. This one was older and more active. He - this one was a boy - had a few fits but was never noisy for more than two minutes at a time. And he was very interested in me so I helped play with and distract him from the otherwise tedious five hour flight.

On arrival in Seattle I spent my first night in the Motel 6 by the airport because the hostel was all booked up. That was the third time I've been to that motel now. It's not that it's so great, just that it's fairly cheap and is right on the bus route into town. So that meant that in the morning, after finding it hard to get up because of the time difference, I took the bus into town and went to the hostel. It is almost spitting distance from Pike Place Market - I think the best location of any place I've stayed in so far.

In the afternoon I took the Underground Seattle tour which takes you one storey below the ground level to the old street level. The back story to this is that when the city was originally built it was prone to flooding and when it burned down the city decided to raise the ground level up with the rebuild but the private owners didn't want to wait for the city to do this so they rebuilt their shops on the original level. When the city built the streets they were ten to thirty feet above the level of the sidewalks. After a certain number of deaths from people falling down from the street to the sidewalk they eventually built new sidewalks at street level, effectively leaving tunnels underneath that could be accessed from the buildings. As you can tell it is a very interesting tour.

On my second day in Seattle, having done all the 'obvious' tourist things when I was here last year, I went back out on the bus towards the airport to the Museum Of Flight. That was quite interesting. It's basically a large building with planes in it and it's got a heavy Boeing slant because it's right next door to the Boeing plant, and the museum incorporates Boeing's original Red Shed where they started up.

In the afternoon I went to the Seattle Art Museum. I'd heard good things about it. I didn't think it was all that great. I'm only a casual art observer rather than an art lover and there wasn't enough to keep me interested. And it was smaller than I thought it would be. I much preferred the Milwaukee Art Museum, which I really liked.

After that was all over I wondered what to do for dinner. I knew the hostel was providing a free dinner that day. Normally I would go for it because it's free food and a great way to get to know some of my fellow hostellers. But something in me didn't want to go - maybe because I saw no point in getting to know people since I was leaving the next day. Whatever it was it took me to the nearby Pike Pub & Brewery and ordered a sampler of their beers with my food.

The guy sat next to me at the bar started talking to me and we talked for a while. He is one of those struggling novelist types, so he was very interesting company. The friend that he was waiting for turned up and he invited me along with them to another bar. So me, Mohammad and Nadia went on to a great bar. They challenged me to a game of shuffleboard. I hadn't seen the game before, let alone played it, but I accepted. They explained the rules and I began by losing the first round. We had drawn a crowd - well, three people. And one of them joined me on my team to make up a full pair. Then the tide turned. Big Chris was clearly a seasoned shuffleboarder and I was inspired in one round with two amazing shots that cleared the board of their pieces and netted us ten points! We defeated them 21-14 and celebrated with another pitcher of beer.

I retired undefeated and let Chris pair up with his friend Daniel against the other two, leaving me to talk to their friend Kelsie. She told me she is going to London later this year so I tried to help out with suggestions, such as "take advantage of the free museums" and "pack a coat and umbrella". Then we hit a second bar next door. It was a really great evening and definitely worth skipping the free meal in the hostel for.

The next day I was extremely hungover and just about made it onto the bus out of town.