Seattle- Wednesday, July 12, 2017

     We were up early for a hotel breakfast with Julie's folks.  They're taking our car back to New York and are leaving today.  We had originally thought that they were going to stop at some places along the way to have a vacation of their own, but they're now going to drive pretty much straight through, stopping at hotels for the evening, but not going to anything like the Mall of America or Green Bay as they had originally planned.  The problem is that Julie's aunt, her father's sister, has had her health turn for the worse, and she could leave us any day now.  We weren't told she was this bad until breakfast this morning.  We tried to see if we could make some other arrangements, like letting her folks use our plane tickets to take Anna and Emma home and get back a little earlier, but they didn't want to change plans.  They said they had welcomed the ability to get away for a little bit at this hard time.  Instead of sitting at home wondering what to do, they had a nice time in Las Vegas with her father's friend Bill, and now they welcomed the chance to drive back too.  We said goodbye to them at breakfast, and prepared for the rest of the day.

     Saying goodbye Julie's folks also meant saying goodbye to our car.  We now had to find a different way to explore Seattle.  We were ready for the challenge.  We tackled the transit systems of bigger cities than this one, and with much stranger languages too.  Our first step was to take the shuttle offered by the hotel.  It took us as far as the light rail station nearby in had Tukwila.  Our drive was an immigrant from Africa who talked to Julie quite a bit, and a fellow passenger was a flight attendant who was on in between trips to Atlanta and Beijing.  We had very little problem figuring out the light rail, and took it to the station called Westlake Station.  It is next to Nordstrom’s (which we later learned started here in Seattle), and just a few blocks from our first stop- the Pike Place Market.

     The Pike Place Market is one of the most popular attractions in Seattle, and was mentioned to us by a lot of people.  It was an interesting place with a little more variety in the shopping than what we were expecting.  Yes, there were booths selling fish and others selling flowers and locally grown farm products like cherries, and there were several places selling souvenirs, but there were also places that were selling collectibles and art.  The market covers a large area and has several levels, we looked around and negotiated through the crowds for a while.  We eventually got outside to the waterfront, and enjoyed the view there for a few minutes.   There was probably more to see.  We never did find the guys who famous throw fish over people’s heads, but we had a good time and were ready to move on.

     Across the street from the market was the first Starbucks location.  Its lines were out the door, and some of the Starbucks staff were there to keep the lines from blocking the doors of other businesses.  Anna waited in order to get something here.  There were a lot of people taking pictures in line.  Anna checked her phone for the Starbuck’s menu and picked out something new to try, but her order for a lemon bar frappuccino stumped the baristas, and she ended up getting a caramel macchiato.  While Scott and Anna were waiting to be served at Starbuck’s, Julie and Emma went scouting for a good place to eat lunch.  They found an Irish pub named Kells, about a block away, and that seemed to be right up our alley.  Scott sampled some of the house beer there too.

     We returned to the light rail station at Westlake Center and found how to get onto Seattle’s monorail.  It was originally built for the World’s Fair here in 1962 (like the Space Needle), and it is used to connect downtown Seattle to “Seattle Center.”  Seattle Center, where the World’s Fair was, is now the location of a lot of attractions, including the Space Needle, several museums and venues.  If we spent as much time in Seattle as we did in Chicago, we’d probably be coming back to Seattle Center as much as we went back to the Museum Campus and Navy Pier areas of Chicago.  The monorail itself was a short ride, and Julie was disappointed there weren’t more stops and a circle tour, like at Disney.  Emma pointed out that it’s just a straight blue line on the map.   It has one stop, at the fanciful looking Museum of Pop Culture, near the Space Needle, and we got off there.

     The number one attraction in Seattle, in terms of number of tourists, is the iconic Space Needle.  Much as the Eiffel Tower, it was originally built for a world’s fair but has since become the best known icon of the city and is always seen in establishing shots that are supposed to have you recognize that a story takes place in Seattle.  It felt like we had to go see it.  Oddly, because we came into Seattle from the south and it sits to the north, we hadn’t actually seen the building all day until we were almost right under it. 

     First, we bought tickets, then had to wait until our 2:30 time for going up.  (While we were waiting, we got in touch with both sets of parents.  Julie’s folks had just entered Idaho, on their way to Montana for the night.  Scott’s father was doing better after his laser eye surgery yesterday.)  While we were sitting there, we listened to a South American band playing some music.  Scott said the Space Needle looked a bit like the Skylon Tower in Niagara Falls.  The Space Needle was finished in 1962 and is 605 feet high to the top of its antennae.  Skylon was finished in 1965, and is 520 feet to the top of its antennae.  So the Space Needle is a little older and a bit taller.  At 2:30, we went for our turn to stand in line.  There is an exhibit about the history of the tower that you can ready while you are waiting.  It was built from 1961-1962 for Seattle’s Space Age World’s Fair.  The other buildings that it closely resembles are the ones on the Jetsons cartoon and the exhibit claims that the resemblance is deliberate on the part of the animators, and the Jetsons debuted later in 1962.  Once we got up in the elevator, we made our way to the outdoor viewing platform.  The view was nice, and we were able to see a number of things around Seattle.  The most dramatic thing might have been the looming face of Mount Rainier.   On this trip, we learned that Mount Rainier is a volcano, like Mount Saint Helens and Mount Hood.  It is only occasionally visible from Seattle, but when it can be seen, it is an impressive sight and looks like it must be right on the city limits, but in truth, it is about 100 miles away.  It is pale grey and white, much like the moon, and it was difficult to get it to show up in pictures.  We could pick things out on the waterfront and saw the stadiums where the Mariners and Seahawks play.  Then we waited in line to get the elevator down.  Ultimately, we easily spent more time each of the lines then we actually did looking at the view from the tower itself.  Plus, it was crowded.  We did the math, and since it’s so expensive to go to just the crowded observation deck, it would probably have been worth it to pay a little more to eat in the revolving restaurant and be able to sit and enjoy the view instead.

     So, it was about 3:30, and we probably had time for one more big thing in Seattle today, and we had a family discussion about what to do next.  Some said the Museum of Pop Culture (MoPop) and some said the science museum.  However, when we noticed in the Space Needle how close the “Duck Tour” boat was, we decided to take that.  It was probably decided on quickly because we all liked the idea of sitting down.   We seen tours from these “Ducks” before- amphibious craft originally designed for the military- and have even taken a tour on one in Albany.  The company here is definitely emphasizing the goofiness of the tour over the historical aspects of it.  Our guide identified himself as “Capt. Rob R. Duckie” (i.e., Rubber Duckie) and he stuck to that poor joke for the rest of the tour.  Throughout the tour he was trying very hard to be funny and used very loud music selections to punctuate his talk.  Most of them weren’t needed and didn’t add much to the tour.

      Because traffic was bad this time of day, the tour started and ended later than it was supposed to.  Also, they apparently changed the order that they usually take things in, and we went to the community of Fremont, where counter-culture is heavy.  Scott caught a quick glimpse of the Fremont troll statue under the bridge.   We saw the headquarters for Google Maps, and Anna noticed the offices of Big Fish, a company that makes games and apps for the iPhone.  We went to freshwater Lake Union, and drove in.  The city skyline was nice from there, and included both the Space Needle and Mount Rainier.  We were most charmed by the floating houses and houseboats (different things) that line the lake, and cost upwards of $1.5 million.  One of them was pointed out as the setting for the Tom Hanks movie, Sleepless in Seattle.    

     Julie said that the tour didn’t tell an outsider much about the history of Seattle, and that’s true.  Looking back at what he told us though, there were some significant incidents that he discussed.  He told us about the how the first white settlers had been helped by the Native Americans in the area, and the city was named for the native chief, or at least an Anglicized version of his name.  He told us how the great Seattle Fire burned down 25 blocks of wooden buildings and how, like Chicago, the new city was built on top of the old one.  He told us how “Miners Landing” got its name from the event that really put Seattle on the map- the Klondike Gold Rush, and the large number of miners that left from there to try to get to the gold fields in Alaska.  But these bits were mixed in with the “Chicken Dance” and a “Tequila” sing-a-long, so they were buried pretty deep.

     The tour had run late, and we had not grabbed something to eat before it, so we were all pretty hungry now.  We ate at the food court in the “Seattle Armory” which is one of the buildings in Seattle Center.  Then we started our trek back to the hotel--  first the monorail, then the light rail.  The most frustrating part was when we waited in Tukwila for the shuttle from our hotel, but it eventually came.  After we got back to the hotel, Scott, Anna and Emma walked to 7-11 to get drinks and snacks.  It was essentially right around the corner from the hotel, but construction on a sidewalk meant that they had to play “Crossy Road” four times to get across a busy street and back.