Today in Travel News

As a rule, most of the space in my head is spent dreaming of where to travel next.  It may not be the most useful of distractions, but it certainly is fun.  Because of that, I follow loads of travel sites and bloggers on social media.  Every once in a while you'll discover a gem, like a great new restaurant in the one city you're planning to visit soon or cheap deals on flights. Or you might just uncover the most random of stories about famous travel destinations.  

This happened today.

In breaking travel news, Seattle announced it would be getting rid of the Pike Place Gum Wall.  This is an actual story trending on multiple sites today.  I have to admit I have all sorts of feelings about this.  For those who may not know what the gum wall is, it's exactly what it sounds like. There's a wall in Seattle's famed Pike Place market that holds 20 years worth of people's chewed chewing gum.  Eww!

I had so many questions when I first learned about this wall.  Why, being of course, the first one?  Did someone just need to get rid of their gum one day while passing a nice clean wall? And did the chewed gum look so nice, that thousands of people then followed suit?  Why hasn't the city stopped this disgusting phenomena of people placing chewed gum on a wall? Just how man diseases are swimming around that one wall?  And, most disgustingly of all, just how bad is the insect infestation around thousands of pieces of food that's been hanging out for 20 years?  How has this become an attraction that people actually want to go see because I gotta say, it seems like something I'd plan an entire trip around not seeing.  And just how much disinfectant does one use when taking photos near the wall?  

So very, very gross!

Apparently, after the city of Seattle (maybe) asked themselves these same questions, they've decided to steam clean the whole wall to the cost of $4000. That's actually a lot cheaper than I thought.  If it were up to me, I'd just steam roll the entire wall and build a brand new one - just to erase any and all remnants of the grossness. The only upside to all of this is that it should be gone by the time I make it to Seattle next summer.  Thank goodness for small miracles!