Walking Seattle

"Rain on my hopes
Rain on my soul
Ran on everything that I know
It feels so ludicrous
The pursuit of this dream
We thought we'd be there long ago

and we are looking for the same thing, the same thing.
Seattle is calling me back home, back home." -       “Seattle” by The Classic Crime

This past weekend I had the opportunity (a couple hundred bucks and adventurous roommates with a car) to go to Seattle!

Friday after work, the three of us hopped into the car and began our adventure. We got into Seattle 4 hours later around 8:30ish. We stopped by the art show where a friend of my one roommates (and who we were staying with for the weekend) had her art. The art show was pretty much just as I’d expect – a variety of paintings as wide as classical nudes to abstract art of demons and fairies. As interesting as all the paintings were, the people were even more interesting! Bohemian skirts, wooden Dutch shoes, colors, and dreadlocks. It was very unique and I felt a little (or maybe a lot!) uncomfortable and out of place. After the art show, we dropped our stuff off in Columbia City where we were staying. Everyone (besides me) wanted to go drinking, and because it was in a rough neighborhood I didn’t feel comfortable staying home alone. So we all walked down to the bar and stayed there until midnight. Thankfully no one got completely drunk…I would not have wanted to deal with that. Needless to say, it is not my preferred Friday night to be in bar. Let alone on a Friday the 13^th and a full moon night! (I’m really not superstitious about the Friday the 13^th thing, but the full moon thing is true! I’ve worked in customer service).

Chelsea and I got up at 8 and left the house. We took Seattle Transit train downtown. It is so much fun to be able to take random turns and go wherever we choose! It reminds me of Dr. Suess’s “Oh, The Places You’ll Go” book when it says “you can point your feet in any direction you choose!” We walked down to the waterfront first. The smell of salt water hit me and I breathed in deeply and licked the salt off my lips. When we looked over the edge of the pier, there were jellyfish everywhere.

On the waterfront we stopped at famed “Ye Olde Curiosity Shop” and got postcards and amazing strawberry cheesecake fudge. On Pier 66 they were having a wooden yacht show so we got to get on and tour the Glory Be. It was really cool inside! From there we walked across town to the Space Needle. We decided we didn’t want to pay the rip off prices to go up in it, so we just stayed at the bottom and took pictures!

After taking some pictures, we walked over to the Pacific Science Center and decided to go to that instead of the aquarium. It was SOO worth it!! We loved it! There are a ton of hands on things to do, insects to see, a butterfly garden to walk through, and best of all, an exhibit on Spies during WWII and the Cold War! It was incredible!

We were trying to find Pike’s Place Market and mistakenly thought it was on the waterfront, so we accidentally walked the whole way down to the Seahawks and Mariner’s Stadiums! I got a few quick pictures there and stopped in the Pro Shop and then we were on our way again! We walked through a hobo camp and then several city blocks until we finally found Pike’s Market! The fresh fish markets toss fish out to the customers, and there are people everywhere. Buckets of fresh flowers fill up the tables and make the air fragrant. We walked through it, stopping to get ice cream from one of the stalls. Then we headed to Sound View Café and grabbed supper.

Our coworkers had recommended going to the Underground Tour if we liked history. Since we are both nerds, we jumped on the chance to go. Basically it takes you through the underground of Seattle. If you know the parable of the foolish man building his house on the sand, well that’s how Seattle was. They built it on the sand, and when the tide came in, it flooded everything back into the houses, including all of the sewage. This went on for years until they finally decided to make the city higher, so everything that used to be the first story of the buildings is now underground, and the second story is now the one at street level. It was very informative! After that Chelsea stopped for a drink and we just relaxed and mapped out how far we had gone.

By the time we took the train home 12 hours after we started, we were exhausted! No one could believe how far we had walked overall!

Sunday Morning, we got up early and walked to Specialty Café where we grabbed an egg sandwich and pastries. Then we headed up all of the hills until we arrived at St. James Cathedral, where we went to Mass. After mass we headed back down to the waterfront to take a ferry across the bay over to Bainbridge Island.

On Bainbridge Island, we explored the little shops (I got a funky beach glass ring), grabbed lunch at the “Soup’r Burger” where they had a superhero theme. They had these awesome paintings of manatees dressed as superheroes! Surprisingly, it didn’t rain on us when we were in Seattle, but while we were on the island we got soaked as we ran across the island trying to make the ferry! We did, but barely! On the ferry ride home, I heard Celtic music playing and so I walked around the ship to investigate. This guy was playing the bagpipes for everyone! I’m used to seeing people playing saxophones and ukuleles, not bagpipes! It was fantastic!! I got to hear two of my favorite instruments in one day – pipe organs and bagpipes! We got back to the house we were staying at, packed up and headed back to Medical Lake.

We were making awesome time until our wonderful driver (we really do love her ;)) took a wrong turn and we got on a dirt road in the middle of nowhere, so we got home a little bit before 10pm.

Overall, it was a wonderful trip! Seattle is wonderful. I could definitely live in the Pacific Northwest. The mountains are beautiful. I’d have to get used to the rain though!

Things I Didn’t Do in Seattle:

§  Drink Starbucks (even though there is one on almost every corner)

§  Go up in the Space Needle (too expensive)

§  Get rained on actually IN the city

§  Go to the Original Starbucks

§  The Bill Gate House

§  The EMP Museum

§  The Seattle Great Wheel

What I did do was go wherever I wanted to, got around Seattle without a map (we could not find one until Saturday night right before we got back to where we were staying), laughed a lot, saw interesting people, and had a wonderful, amazing, magical time! It’s impossible to pick a favorite thing that I did. I enjoyed it all. Hopefully someday I’ll get the chance to go back and explore some more of it (like the Jimi Hendrix museum!), but for now, I think I got a pretty good start!