Pacific Coast Adventure - Day 2 touring Seattle

Seattle, From Bottom to Top

After a restful night’s sleep and a delicious breakfast, we boarded our motor coach and began our city tour of Seattle with a visit to the University of Washington campus where we drove by the new Husky stadium where the University of Washington Huskys play in the NCAA Pac-10 conference.  The stadium will be opened for play this coming season.  Continuing on to downtown Seattle we visited or drove by a few of Seattle landmarks.  If you remember the “Sleepless in Seattle” with Tom Hanks and Megan Ryan there was a scene that was filmed on a houseboat. Well, we drove by that houseboat and memories of the movie came into focus.  We visited Chittenden Locks and Fish Ladders. While driving around tow we enjoyed views of Seattle’s iconic and most famous landmark, the Space Needle.

Our tour ended with a visit to Pike Place Market, home of the flying fish. Quite a sight to behold, watching fish flying all over the place. Of course no one was able to step in and try their hand at catching one only staff does the tossing. Besides our fishermen do their best work with a rod and reel.

One of Seattle’s most famous businesses, Starbucks got their start here and the very first Starbucks store, still serving up at the original location. We broke for lunch and a bit of free time to walk around, take it all in and maybe do a bit of shopping. Beautiful flowers everywhere, bakeries tempting our nostrils with the aromatic smells of freshly baked breads and pastries, the freshest seafood you’ll find anywhere and of course, art and jewelry vendors and stores displaying their goods for the shopping masses.

Following our lunch and a bit of a walk-around we again boarded the coach and headed 30 miles north of Seattle to Everett, Washington for a very interesting and informative tour of the Boeing factory, home to the 747, 767, 777 and 787 Dreamliner production lines. Our tour director, Sandy led the way while I stayed behind to get my broken camera repaired. By volume this is the largest building in the world, covering over 98 acres of space. It’s big enough to hold Disneyland with 12 acres left over for parking.  We could not get very close to the actual aircraft production but we sure could tell there was work in progress. Over the years several prominent dignitaries have toured the Boeing facility. Most notable of them is U.S. President Bill Clinton, Australian Prime Minister Paul Keating, His Royal Highness Prince Andrew, the Duke of York and now, the Travel Masters and Grand Travelers!

After dealing with heavy traffic at rush hour the group still returned to the hotel on time. A quick freshen up and on to dinner on our own at one of Seattle’s many restaurants.  Several of us decided on dinner at The Crab Pot, on Alaskan Way, right off the bay. So four taxis worth of our group left the hotel all made it there safely for dinner. The Crab Pot put us all in the right frame of mind for some of that fresh seafood (some wanted a burger) like we saw earlier today at Pike Place Market. I had a very delicious dinner of delicious crab legs (must saw the best I ever had) along with a tasty beverage to top it off. A truly wonderful way to end the day.

But wait! The day’s not over, is it? Before we left from Northwest Arkansas on this fabulous tour, I purchased enough tickets for each of us (that were interested) to voyage to the top of the famous Space Needle to see the wondrous landscape of Seattle by the light of day and the dark of night, illuminated of course by the man-made glow of city lights through the beautiful skyline. Our timed entry to the elevator was for 8:30pm. Little did we know that one of the elevators was down for maintenance and that only two of the three elevators would be in service.  Were we going to make it to the top of the Space Needle and see the Seattle skyline change from daylight to darkness? Thanks to bit of good fortune and a fast elevator (packing us in like sardines), we made it to the observation deck, 520 feet above street level. The view was breathtaking to say the least. We could see Mt. Rainier in the distance albeit barely, but we could see it. We’re told that it’s viewable only about half of the year. Good thing we were in the half that could see it.

So, after taking it all in from the top of the city we rode the elevator back down to the reality of the street and started for our hotel. Several of the group decided to take the monorail back but don’t think anyone took the S.L.U.T., Seattle’s new mass transportation vehicle. Officially, it’s called the South Lake Union Streetcar, but in the neighborhood where the car runs it’s called the South Lake Union Trolly, hence the unfortunate nickname of the S.L.U.T. I’m sure it wasn’t the name that stopped anyone in the group from riding, just a decision not to.  We’ll ride the trolly in San Francisco for sure, though.

Arriving at the hotel we said our good nights and headed off to slumber to be rested up for tomorrows events.