Seattle is conspiring against me. I'm convinced of it. This is my second visit to the city (the first one being for an interview with Microsoft about 12 years ago), and on both occasions, the weather has been absolutely beautiful. But I will not be tricked, Seattle. I know your true nature. I know that you are actually grey and rainy and dismal. You will not convince me that you are a super cool city with beautiful, sunny weather that I would consider moving to. I refuse to believe the evidence I have seen!!!
I did NOT want to get out of bed this morning. I didn't stay up too late last night, but still, this morning I had no desire to move from my bed. So I got up and out about an hour later than planned, which still worked out just fine. First stop was the Seattle Underground Tour. I learned so much about Seattle history today! In 1889, there was a huge fire that destroyed all of the downtown area and they had to rebuild. Well, the original town was built down on sea level, and apparently, the tides caused all sorts of sewage problems in the streets. So when they went to rebuild the city, they basically condemned all of the previous streets and raised the ground level up by one or two stories. So under the current city, there is still the old network of streets and buildings that haven't been used in over a century. The tour takes you down into these streets & buildings. It's pretty neat. The tour was really interesting - I just wish the groups had been smaller. In my group, we had about 30-35 people. That's a pretty large group for a tour of this nature where you're walking down and up stairs and through corridors.
After the tour completed, I made my way over to the start point for the volksmarch. I got the registration info for the walk, but then went over to lunch at Tilikum Place Café. I had a great omelette, side salad and side of roasted potatoes with homemade ketchup. So good! I definitely recommend this place. Most everything seemed local and a lot was home made in house.
I then started the volksmarch. The very first thing I passed was the Space Needle. If I had chosen to go up immediately, I would have had to wait for maybe an hour or so, so instead, I bought a ticket for later in the day to come back after I finished the walk. And then I continued on with the walk. Overall, a very good walk. I saw the waterfront (including where the Real World cast lived while they filmed here, SafeCo field, the international district, the Library (a really cool building), and lots of really neat buildings and shops and whatnot. A great walk. The best part was the most surprising though - I ran into a friend from home. How crazy is that??? I used to see him a lot back in Austin, but over the past few years, we've only seen each other on rare social occasions. But I totally ran into him on the water front here in Seattle. He's in town for a bachelor party. Random, right? Anyway, I talked to him and his 2 friends briefly, but I had a schedule to keep, so had to continue on.
I finished up with the walk and went back to the Space Needle right on time for the ticket that I had. I went up without much wait and the view was beautiful! Seriously beautiful day out there - I saw Mount Rainier, which was pretty cool. And I also saw a cruise ship departing out of port. Took a few pictures and just relaxed up there for a while before leaving downtown, picking up some pizzas for dinner and heading back to the house.
Leaving Seattle tomorrow - onwards and upwards.
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