Well, here we are in Seattle. My true confession is that we forgot the camera on September 18 - left it locked it in the trunk at the park and ride! Couldn't believe we could be so ditsy - but it's not the first time, nor the last!
We stopped in Seattle on the way home from our Oregon Coast road trip in June 2005, which pre-dates this blog. The pictures here are the ones we took in 2005. They'll have to do. None of them are terrific. I had a splitting headache when I took most of them, so they are even worse than my pictures can be! Happily, no headache on September 18. And as you can see, the day was overcast. That's OK because it was overcast when we were there on September 18.
The next true confession I have is that we really weren't all that crazy about Seattle. We went back the second time to see if there was something we missed - what with the weather and headache - maybe it was just the day.
I shouldn't be too harsh - there are lots of cool things about Seattle. For example, "1% of eligible city capital improvement project funds be set aside for the commission, purchase and installation of artworks." The result is that there are many fascinating pieces of public art in the downtown. [http://www.seattle.gov/arts/publicart/default.asp]
Seattle has some really interesting history. As we often do, in 2005, we took the Greyline tour. It was excellent and we learned about some of the things that make Seattle an interesting place.
Check out: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seattle
We had the BEST ice cream cone at the mall downtown.
Now that I've gotten into quilting, I had to check out a very cool quilting shop near Pikes Peak Market - Undercover Quilts! I bought some really cool fabric there. Go to my quilting blog if you want to see it.
One other place we liked was Gallery Mack's - one of the first galleries we looked at. One of the artists, Andrew Carson, featured there does "wind sculptures." Of course now that the dollar has dropped again I'm kicking myself that we decided to hold off until the backyard landscaping is done before we got one. Maybe by then, it will have recovered some. In any event, check out the link and scroll down until you get to "wind sculptures" to take a look. I want one!!!!
Here is the Space Needle at the Seattle Center, which was the site of the 1962 World's Fair.
This is the Experience Music Project. I think the best thing for you to do is to go to the website - it will take many paragraphs to explain the concept of this place and its architecture. The very short explanation is that it's a museum dedicated to Jimmy Hendrix and other Seattle musicians. We went through it in 2005 - there are a lot of a cool artifacts. If you are at all interested in rock 'n' roll history you would find it worthwhile.http://www.empsfm.org/aboutEMPSFM/index.asp
Part of the building houses the Science Fiction Hall of Fame. We didn't go through it (another $20 per person and I had a headache) but I imagine it's a place Craig would really like to see.
We went down to the waterfront. This is the very disappointing part of the city. There's not much else I can say other than it's just plan ugly and noisy. The freeway runs right by the waterfront so outside you simply cannot hear anything but the constant roar of traffic. It was very obviously designed as an industrial port with no mind toward tourism. Which I suppose is fine, but for me a lot of the fun of visiting port cities is hanging out at the waterfront. We've been to a number of port cities: Vancouver, Halifax, Quebec, Auckland, Wellington, Manzanillo, and San Francisco, for example. They all have really nice waterfront areas. Seattle does not. I really didn't try to get bad pix, it's just that there is no place to stand where you can actually get a good one. Anyway - take a look - then go find a coffee table book that has some nice pix taken on a sunny day to see what the tourism folks would want you to see, but we apparently missed both times.
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