The first two days I was in Seattle, I spent my time between the Comfort Suites Seattle Center and the Bell Harbor Conference Center for a conference. A great place to stay. They have free high speed internet (so I could check on the girls on the doggy cam at Camp Bow Wow). I had forgotten a network cable and they gave me one. The conference center is really nice - with a Odyssey Maritime Discovery museum on the first floor. It sits right on the water so has gorgeous views of the sound.
Wednesday night, the conference had a formal dinner at a place called Dimitriou's Jazz Alley. The food was fantastic. We were entertained by a Bay Area singer named Lorraine Feather. Unfortunately a good portion of the folks there talked loudly over her singing. So I felt kind of badly for her but bought her CD. She writes lyrics to old Jazz tunes (Fats Waller, Duke Ellington) and they lyrics are really fun.
Thursday the hubby joined me. During the day, I finished my conference and he worked at the Seattle office of the company he works with (doing computer *stuff*). We wandered off from the Comfort Suites that evening and headed to a little pub called McMenamins Queen Anne. They have their own beer (I tried Terminator Stout) and great Ahi tuna tacos.
Friday morning we took the hotel shuttle to Pioneer Square. Seattle is a very pedestrian city with great mass transit available. You don't need to rent a car. Many hotels have airport shuttles or you can take the Gray Line Downtown Airporter like I did. Mark got a car to get him to his office, parked it at the motel and then to get us to Olympia and back to the airport.
In Pioneer Square, we took the Bill Speidel's Underground Tour. Ends up the original Seattle burned down. It had been plagued with flooding and plumbing problems so the heads of the city, decided they would knock down a nearby cliff and build up the city. But in the meantime the owners of the buildings wanted to get on with it, so they rebuilt in stone and brick in the same place. After these buildings went up, the city built walls around them, filled up the streets with the cliff and other stuff. So now the first floors of these older buildings are underground and the street level is at the second story. The tours take you under the sidewalks and view a lot of fun things. They are led by people in theater and comedy and the history of Seattle is given to you very tongue-in-cheek.
After the tour, we ate paninis and limonada at a little mediterranean place (Mediterranean Mix) off Pioneer square. We ventured back out and walked down to the piers and the waterfront. I have to mention the weather. It was 50s and 60s and blue sky. Yeah - kind of weird for Seattle for this time of year. We had to stop in Ye Olde Curiosity Shoppe on Pier 54. It's a combo shop and museum of the weird. There are human and animal mummies, a siamese calf, shrunken heads and more.
From there we took 185+ steps to Pike Place Market. Good thing we're from a high altitude so didn't have heart attacks. We visited a bunch of shops below the market, watched them throw fish, smelled gorgeous boquets of flowers. We bought some cinnamon hazelnuts, then ventured a little farther up hill to Westlake center. On the way to Westlake, I saw a sign for Three Dog Bakery and had to get the pups some treats from our trip. I put my cinammon hazelnuts in the same shopping bag. I got some odd looks munching on something I was pulling from the Three Dog Bakery bag. At Westlake Center we boarded the monorail back to the Seattle Center. It’s a quick trip but fun being so high above the streets (and a good way to rest weary feet).
We had started the day under the city and we ended it high above the city in the Space Needle. We watched a rain storm roll in from the north. There was a wine tasting from a Washington vineyard (NorthStar out of Walla Walla). The Stella Maris Columbia Valley Red was very tasty. We headed back down the elevator and up the Queen Anne hill for some dinner.
We chose a place from the guidebook called Ten Mercer, about 5 or 6 blocks from our hotel. As we walked up hill, the light rain turned into a torential downpour and came at us horizontally. We got to the restaurant soaked, walked in the door, looked around and noticed everyone seemed a little dressed up. We were in wet jeans. After some discussion about reservations (no) and tables (yes, please), we sat at the bar and tried another local wine. Ends up there was both ballet and opera shows that evening (which is why people were dressy). After that initial dinner rush, more people came in wearing jeans and less formal wear. Dinner was worth the walk in the rain and the service was fantastic. Yum!
Saturday we drug our weary legs out of bed, checked out of the hotel, and headed back to the Seattle Center around the corner. This time we went to the new Frank Gehry-designed building(?) housing the Experience Music Project. The building itself is a sight to see. Very curvy, metallic, colorful blop (like something dropped from the needle). EMP is a music museum/interactive experience (thus the name) mostly focused on Pacific NW musicians, including Bob Dylan and Jimi Hendrix. After that we visited the Science Fiction museum (housed in the same building). Lots of fun stuff there. Both museums are the ideas of Paul Allen (the other half of Microsoft). It was funny to see a lot of the items on display in the Sci-Fi museum were from his personal collection. Software geek = sci-fi fan. Imagine that!
Since two museums are not enough in one day, we hit the Museum of Flight near Boeing on our way down I-5 to Olympia. It's full of all things with wings. If you think my hubbie had fun in the Sci-Fi museum, he was a kid with cotton candy on Christmas day here. The museum includes an air park outside. They have a Concorde you can walk through. The only problem they had covered the seats with a plastic bubble on each side so you had barely enough room to walk through. It got jammed up at the cockpit so it was slow going. I was 30 seconds from hyperventilating - didn't realize I was that claustrophobic!
We headed down to my w-Dad's place outside of Olympia for the night. My hubby hadn't been out there to see his place yet. It was a quick visit but I'd be in trouble being the state without visiting! Sunday morning, he and his wife Marcia took us to this place down the road (Kennedy Creek) to watch Salmon spawn. Not only do they swim upstream but they like to run in very shallow water. They are big guys too and not very pretty. The Kennedy Creek area is somewhat rain foresty - lots of moss and mushrooms.
Then back to the airport and home to the pups and kitties.
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