Space Needle
Today the plan is to do sightseeing in Seattle. For weeks Seattle has had excellent weather, but today is the first day with rain in a long time. Just our luck…. We got up and walked from the beautiful hotel to the Public Market at the bottom of Pike Street. There we had a healthy breakfast. And it is the perfect place to start the day in Seattle. The Public Market is famous for the fish-throwing salespeople at the fish shop. So we had to take a look, but there are also many fresh vegetables, fruit, flowers, etc. And across the street is the very first Starbucks ever. The one with which the coffee kingdom started! After walking around for a while, we decided to do the underground tour. Mainly because it had started to rain, so we figured that going underground was a god plan. A 30 minute walk (with a 10 minute stop to shelter from the rain, and another 15 minute Starbucks break, we got to Pioneer Square, where the tour starts. We got there at 11:45. The 12:00 tour was full, and the next one wasn’t until 13:00. These tours last 1.5 hours, and we didn’t want to wait over an hour and then do a 1.5 hour tour: too much time would be taken away from Seattle sightseeing.
We decided to go to the Space Needle and have lunch on top. And that’s what we did. We didn’t have lunch at the restaurant (which is amazingly expensive) but at the coffee/snack bar one floor higher.
The very first Starbucks ever
Despite the rain the Space Needles offer fantastic views of Seattle, the Puget Sound and the surrounding areas (Cascades, Olympic mountain range). Unfortunately we couldn’t see many of the beautiful views you can see on a clear day, but it is still impressive.
After the Space Needle we took the monorail back to the city center and we bought a few things to wrap up the gifts we bought at Schiphol for Bill and Beth’s daughters, who we would see that night. Karin then had a quick nap, while I bought some maps of Washington and Oregon.
Around 17:30 we drove to my friend Beth, who I know from my days at Legent. It was fun. We gave them all of the wooden shoes. Bill got real ones, while the girls got slippers that looked like wooden shoes. And Beth got a delicious dutch treat: stroopwafels (waffels with maple syrup). We had dinner, and catched up on things. It was fun! Beth: thanks for the salmon and the good time!
When we left we felt like zombies…. Jetleg had kicked in. But it was a good first day.
Seattle images:
