After leaving the Olympic Peninsula, we headed for Seattle. We were excited to go there and had heard what a great city Seattle was. Also, we were looking forward to the arrival of our good friends, Les and Joanne Johnston, who were flying to Seattle later in the week and doing some traveling with us!
Art and I stayed in Everett, just north of Seattle, which is also the home of Boeing. Our first sightseeing adventure was to the Boeing factory and the "Future of Flight" Museum. The tour of the factory was fascinating! The building where the planes are manufactured is the largest building in the world by volume! Our guide said 76 football fields would easily fit inside! There is a tunnel underneath the building which is 2/3 of a mile long! Boeing is manufacturing a new passenger plane and cargo plane called the "Dreamliner" and "Dreamlifter". It was amazing to watch these huge machines being built!
Once Les and Joanne arrived, we spent 2 days touring the actual city of Seattle. On our first day, we headed downtown to the harbor area. We started with a cruise of the Seattle Harbor. Our cruise narrator was very informative and it was fun to look at the city from Puget Sound. After the cruise, we headed for the Pike Place Market, which lived up to all the hype we had heard! It is a huge public market, full of vendors with fresh fruits, meats, vegetables, flowers, crafts, etc. You name it and it probably was available! Also, within and surrounding the market were shops, restaurants, street performers, and lots of people. The Pike Place Fish Market is famous for their "fish" throwing. As customers order fish, the employees have a routine of calling out and throwing the fish across the store, even the large ones, for another employee to catch and wrap. It is quite an entertaining routine and crowds gather around to watch. The original Starbucks is also in the market area, and people were constantly lined up to buy coffee there.
The "Wall of Gum" deserves mention. A Seattle native told us of a shortcut between the market and the harbor, and mentioned the gum wall as a point of interest. We took his advice on the shortcut, and sure enough there was a long wall of gum that people deposited after chewing! Some depositors even spelled out words with their gum! Gross, but interesting, all at the same time! Yes, I did add to the wall!
To end our first day of touring, we went to the Seattle Space Needle. First built in 1962 for a world's fair, it remains today as a popular tourist attraction. There are great 360 degree views from the top!
Our second day in Seattle, we decided to go on the "Underground Seattle" tour. When Seattle was first built, it was constructed below sea level which caused many problems, including the back-up of sewage! After a fire in the late 1800's, the city was rebuilt on top of the old city, leaving a network of tunnels below the new streets. For a time, this space was used for commercial purposes and eventually closed when it became rat infested. In the 60's, a local historian, Bill Speidel, was aware of these tunnels and wanted to preserve them, so he began lecturing about them. The lectures grew into regular tours, which are now extremely popular! It was so interesting to see this area, and the tour guides were very entertaining and funny. Who would have known when you were walking in parts of Seattle, this was underneath you??
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