So Sunday I went to the airport to pick up Hansen who came to visit from NH. He needed a vacation and Seattle was a place he had never been, not to mention I was there! Lucky for him, he was able to enjoy the last really sunny, warm days of September before the rain set in. We stayed at the Marriott which was a real treat for me, having bunked with everyone throughout this journey, it sure felt good to have a place to make a mess of!
Since he arrived at noon we took a stroll back to the market so he could take in all the vendors, fish and spicy food. Every place that offered "The hottest ____" (Jam, almonds, candy, anything you can make spicy) we stopped to taste (well he tasted, I just watched in awe and tried the raw honey and blueberry syrup). After an afternoon at the market we headed up town a bit in search of a store Hansen wanted to check out, we found it at the top of a hill, thank god I have been working out! :) On the way down we enjoyed a casual stroll, downhill :), to the car and drove a few blacks to the hotel. The Marriott was in a great spot on the water, it sat just behind the many piers along the shore. The piers held restaurants and shops as well as ports for the many cruise ships that departed Sunday evening. We had a fabulous dinner at Cutters, with a view of the sound, where we tried dungeness crab-it was so good! It tasted like Stone Crab from the Florida keys! Sweet and delicious!
Hansen plotting out what to do and see in town.
So Monday we had breakfast in Pikes Place Market, it is only 2 blocks from the hotel! Then enjoyed some time at Tulley's coffee shop because they had free Internet. Now of course you are wondering why we would travel 2 blocks uphill for Internet when our hotel is right there, well I'll tell you, the Marriott charges you $13 a day for Internet! Yes, $13/day!! That is $390 for a month! Comcast charges what? $50/month?! What is that $1.66/day?! What a rip off! So we bought drinks and sat happily, Hansen worked and I blogged. Afterwards we headed out to check out some sights.
The first was the Experience Music Project, a museum attached to the science fiction museum and next to the space needle and amusement rides. It opened in 2000 and is an interactive museum that plays tribute to a variety of musicians starting in the early 1900's. There are videos, recordings, and a bunch of items like song lyrics written by the bands and clothing worn in performances. Of course, there is a huge section for Grunge (started in Seattle) like Nirvana and Bush but also a large display for the 'birth' of Hip-hop as well. There was a guitar room, with some one of a kind pieces dating back to 'one of the first guitars' acoustic, electric and bass. There were also four guitars belonging to famous artists that were signed and donated to the museum (you will have to visit to find out who). There was a room devoted to Jimi Hendrix, original recordings, his writings and reflections as well. It was really amazing. The third floor offered a chance to interact with the music. Instruments and microphones were setup for people to try out, complete with programs to learn how to play the drums (don't worry Jess and Tia I didn't even attempt that one!), guitar, keyboard, mixing, and voice. You could also enter private booths to jam out in a 'sound studio' and even certain rooms where you could record your work! I tried the voice room, you had 10 minutes to try out singing certain songs. You could adjust the volume in the room as well as the acoustics...it was so much fun!! Check out the website www.empsfm.org
Afterwards we took the monorail across town to Pioneer square to sign up for an "Underground Tour". I was told that this was the tour to take if you were visiting Seattle. So many locals I met wanted to, but felt that, being residents now, they couldn't possibly do it! So instead it was my job to take the tour and report back to them. So we signed up and then grabbed some food and drinks at this Korean place next door, while we waited for it to begin.
The tour started at 6, the last tour of the day, in an old bar in pioneer square. There the guide told us about how Seattle was founded and designed. It was created after a man, who's name escapes me, who was a doctor who settled in Cleveland, OH when it was first being built. There he watched how to construct and plan a city. From there he left Cleveland and traveled west along the Oregon trail with other pioneers helping them as he went. He found Seattle and after some complications with ownership and a trip away to California, he was able to regain some control and layout the city. If you are familiar with Cleveland, we were told, Seattle resembles Cleveland very much. The city, originally named many strange things, was formally named Seattle after Chief Seattle, a great Native American leader in the area. After learning the city's background we headed out in two groups on our tour. Sure enough we did head underground.
These stairs are all over the area, but are gated off and for use only for tour groups and the occasional wedding (there is a whole clean area setup for it and everything!). Otherwise I would assume all the homeless would be happily resting inside (and there are A LOT of homeless in Seattle for some reason! Lack of a real winter perhaps?)
Our guide explaining the city's layout in our first underground stop. Seattle was much lower in the pioneer days, it seems it was at sea level and therefore greatly affected, for a number of reasons, by the tides. Streets and houses would flood at high tide, yet since Seattle at this time was built primarily on shipping there was no great interest in improving the situation. Even when the 'crapper' was invented and installed in the city (now referred to as a 'toilet') and huge drainage pipes (made of planks of wood) ran from the top of the hill down into the ocean where currents took it 30 miles south to Tacoma (the town everyone makes fun of in Seattle), they still ignored the tide problem. Even when it got so bad that at high tide pressure would back up the sewage drain pipe so much people were actually blown off their crappers at high tide, still nothing was done. It wasn't until the 'great fire' (doesn't every city have at least one of these?) that thoughts to rebuild were devised. Except the problem was the surrounding cities, see if Seattle, a major port, was to shut down in order to raise its streets and buildings, it would lose a ton of business so instead they decided to initially just build buildings with three stories, instead of the average 2 stories first and then build the streets up and around those existing buildings. As a result the 3 story buildings again become 2 stories once the streets were raised up. This of course results in an entire story and street level underground with access to hundreds of buildings and businesses. Thus it is that level, the underground, that we toured and learned all about. It was an amazing tour and there was so much more we learned about the people and the lives they lead, this is just a basic explanation!
The original crapper, it is raised 2-3 ft above the ground to lessen the pressure built up when high tide came in and blew some people clear off the can!
A more 'artsy' picture of the crapper:) ( I wished we still called it the crapper, that was the inventor's name! Its the least we could do!)
climbing between streets
there is the walkway we used on the left, the entire underground street is pictured.
A hotel that we visited from the ground floor, a lot of history in this place too (but I don't want to ruin the whole tour for you!)
This is a photograph of old Seattle before the fire. If you look closely on the left there is a plume of 'smoke' and that is someone being blown off their crapper! The newspaper actually posted the tide schedule on the front page each day to prevent these accidents!
This is a sky light, created to bring more light down to the lower level while it was still being used during the raising of the streets. The sky lights are still visible around the city many have purple glass in them, they are really quite beautiful. Check out their website at www.undergroundtour.com
The tour was so much fun! Its off to Port Townsend tomorrow!
