The Emerald City

After a beautiful (but chilly!) ferry ride across the Puget Sound, we drove off the ferry and headed for the middle of Seattle. Sarah Sot moved out to Seattle over the summer to take a job with Boeing, and she graciously offered to let us stay with her for not one, but two, nights! We got in around 1AM and headed straight to bed.

Photo from the Bainbridge Ferry

The next morning, we hopped on the bus and headed to Pike Place Market. First stop: first Starbucks! It wasn’t very different from any other sbux, except for two things. They didn’t have breakfast sandwiches, and they still used the original logo. We got breakfast from a combination of two pastry shops before heading in to the market.

The first thing I noticed, and immediately fell in love with: so many fresh flowers!!!! All the bouquets were beautiful, and super cheap. I think the biggest, most elaborate one was $12. Oh, how I would love to get a new fresh bouquet every week (and not pay $40 for it). We kept walking, and there were so many different varieties of shops. There were stands selling fresh produce (Amy almost got a pound of honeycrisp apples, but talked herself out of it after realizing they were $4/lb), jewelry, pottery, purses, art, clothes… you name it, it was there! Also worth mentioning was what we started referring to as “The Geek Store” – paraphernalia from all shows geeky, and the only store Chris remembered from his trip to the market 15ish years ago. His “almost purchase” of the day was at this store, and was a lightsaber lamp. Much to our chagrin, he talked himself out of it. We did purchase a few things from the market: Amy got some garlic lemon linguine, David got a mug from the first sbux, and I got a few Christmas gifts for you folks back home!

We grabbed lunch at Lowell’s before leaving the market to head to the sewer tours. It was the first chilly day Seattle has seen this fall (everyone was so relieved, they said the warm sunny weather was starting to freak them out), so the clam chowder Amy and I got really hit the spot. The guys got fish n chips, and their meal was delicious as well. Lowell’s looked out over the Sound, and was truly a great find on Chris’s part for lunch.

We then headed towards Pioneer Square for the underground  tour. Amy had gone on this years before, and recommended that we do it again. Per usual, her suggestion did not disappoint! What is the Underground? How did it get there? A tiny tidbit of history: Arthur Denny came west from Illinois, survived the Oregon Trail, and wanted to found a town where Seattle now sits. Why there? No one’s really sure, considering he could’ve easily gone up the hill. He didn’t, Doc Maynard came to town, and the two men ultimately got Seattle up and running… with a few problems. Excerpt from the Seattle Underground webpage: “Where the land was not soggy from Puget Sound seepage, it was saturated by rainfall. After trees were cut and wagons passed through, it was one muddy mess. That’s when the filling began.” They started filling the streets with sawdust, but you can imagine how well that worked. Shortly thereafter, the indoor toilet came to town, and started causing more problems. The sewer system worked well as tide was going out, but terribly as tide was coming in. All that… stuff… just kept getting passed back and forth between Seattle and Tacoma, and toilets became fountains when the tide came in! Seattle was in terrible need of remodeling, and about this time came the Great Seattle Fire, which burned about 25 blocks to the ground. The plan to rebuild was great… but was going to take a long time. The city required that all new buildings be built of stone or brick, and that the streets would be re-graded 1-2 stories higher than before to stop the sewer spewing problems. Thus, when the project was complete, the Underground (what had once been ground level) was born!

Space Needle!

The tour ended around 2PM, and we headed back up to the Westlake station to get tickets for the monorail and head out to the Seattle Center (Space Needle). We learned a lot of fun facts (ex: the Space Needle was built for the 1962 World’s Fair), saw a 360-view of the city, and headed back downtown to meet Sarah for dinner. Sarah put us in charge of choosing the dinner location, so we fired up the phones to see what we could find. For the second time of the day, Google failed. It came up with no good choices, save the ones that offered $100/plate meals. We popped in to a cupcake shop, and asked for a recommendation. The friendly lady recommended Von’s, but on the way we spotted Taphouse, and decided to head in there. Great decision!

View from Space Needle

Taphouse was great! Chris had jambalaya, Amy had crab macaroni & cheese, I had fish tacos, David and Sarah had burgers. Sarah also had a yummy apricot ale, Amy & I had pear ciders, and the guys had beer that Taphouse brewed. Another highlight of Taphouse: we were able to meet up with my cousin and her boyfriend!! Shelby and Daniel live in Seattle as well, and we were so glad for the opportunity to get to catch up with them! From Taphouse, we headed to the Bellmont Pub, which was a perfect destination. It put us all only 10min from home, even though we were going opposite directions. After way too much dessert (apple crisp, ice cream sandwiches, ice cream sundaes…), we headed home.

Good night Seattle, and thank you Sarah!! Thursday is northernmost point... then, eastbound & down.