Time in Seattle

Sunday we woke up to a lovely sunny day and set off towards Pioneer Square to find breakfast. The cafe we wanted to go into was not open so we went into Starbucks and had a sausage, egg and cheese muffin. Very tasty and filling!

After breakfast we went across Pioneer Square to sign up for the Underground Tour, how we did it we do not know but we arrived just in time for the first tour of the day plus because we are Aged Parents we got a concession!

If you ever get to Seattle this tour is a must, it includes a short history of the founding of Seattle, told with a lot of good humour, and then the guide takes you into Pioneer Square to go under many of the buildings of the square. The current doorways are on the original first floor, so the tour has to go down into the basements.

To solve the problems of sewage washing into the streets the city was raised by 8 to 32 feet, depending on the area, to do this retaining walls were built to first of all raise the streets, with ladders provided for customers to gain access to the shops and businesses and the sidewalks.

The citizens got fed up with this, so bridges were built across from the street to the first floor windows of the businesses and eventually new sidewalks were added at first floor level.

After the Underground Tour we went to the observation level of the Smith Tower, which at the time it was opened in 1914 was the highest building west of Chicago. As the day was so bright and sunny we had a brilliant view of the city, looking down at the sports stadia and King Street Station where we had arrived on Friday night. The mountains were particularly clear – we could see the whole of Mount Rainier in the east and the Olympics in the west had the sun shining on their snowy peaks.

We left the tower and walked towards the city centre and found a cafe which offered free wi-fi if you had a coffee/tea in there. We could not resist this, so stopped to bring the blog up to date and to deal with emails.

We returned to the hotel to put the computer back on charge and went to Rock Bottom a micro brewery and restaurant, which was the first restaurant we visited on our trip 5 years ago, for dinner. It still tries to purport to be a brewery but we were told they finished brewing last week, but we could not smell it, it just seems to be a collection of vessels.

On Monday we caught the bus back to Interbay Yard in the hopes of seeing some trains on the move. There were a tremendous number of locos in the yard, but not a lot of stock. However, we walked along besides the track hoping for some action, and saw a train moving on the far side of the tracks, but it was out of sight, Chris decided to film it anyway and a BNSF policeman appeared and asked her to move to the other side of the road to film. Strange because Google Earth had filmed in more or less the same spot – but hey we were having fun.

Exiting the yard we went into the Seattle Train Centre model shop and bought some bits and pieces and spent a pleasant half hour talking to the people there. Feeling refreshed we continued on our way walking back into the city via Elliot Bay Park into Myrtle Edwards Park alongside the huge silos that were loading a ship with grain. We passed the new Olympic Sculpture Park, why is modern sculpture made of red steel? We saw it in Chicago as well!

Having had some lunch we decided to go the Space Needle, another bright clear day meant we could see Mount Rainier and the Olympics in all their glory. On our way to the Needle we saw one of the duck tour vehicles, they take you around Seattle on land and water and we thought we could perhaps do that after the Space Needle, but we missed the last tour of the day so will have to do that another time.

The view from the top of the Needle was fabulous, we had only ever done it at night before, it is much better in daylight. Trying to take a photo of Mount Rainier we were asked if we knew which peak was St Helens, we said we only knew Rainier and were told it was Mount Hood, checked inside and proved we were right!

We returned to Pike Place Bar & Grill again for another fantastic meal, both of us having the steak this time, back to the hotel to start packing for the trip to Australia.

On Tuesday after checking out of the hotel we set of to ride the Seattle Streetcar. This is a new form of transport in the city and it runs from the city centre at Westlake to South Lake Union. The council in their wisdom named it The South Lake Union Trolley; until someone pointed out to them that the initials spelt ‘S.L.U.T.’ It was quickly renamed to Seattle Streetcar, South Lake Union Line. We were very disappointed, it only took about 8 minutes to travel the whole line, guess it will be better as and when, or more likely if, they expand the route, but at the moment we are not sure why it is there.

We returned to the hotel and gathered up our luggage and went off to Sea-Tac airport for the trip to Australia.