Yeah so we decided to make the most of our geographic proximity to Seattle before we head north.
-
- Seattle Public Library
-
- Fish Market
-
- Seattle’s Sky Tower (The Needle)
Being the house husband that I am at the moment, I packed our bag and met Nicole in town on Friday evening to catch our shuttle bus. Equipped with the iPod, our books, guide books from the library, and a selection of snacks, we were ready to roll.
We eased our way through the Friday night traffic in the rain, in the comfort of the bus, and as the traffic thinned out so did the rain. Going through the dreaded U.S border was about as stressful and stringent as checking in on a plane in Auckland bound for Wellington.
A short $10 taxi ride to our downtown hotel and we were ready for our 10:30pm dinner. Downtown Seattle is like many big city cores, pretty dead. It’s apparently beginning to pick up after following what has already happened in Vancouver – more high rise apartments in the downtown area = more people = a more vibrant city centre.
First stop was the Seattle public library. Not to get books but to check out this amazing building. ”The stacks, arranged along a continuous spiral ramp contained within a four-story slab, reinforce a sense of a world organized with machine-like precision.”
Books stacked with machine like precision! With a past involving an engineering trade (Fitting/Turning/Machining) and working in a library, this was top of my Seattle to-do list.
The library lived up to our hopes and was an amazing building.
We then checked out the iconic Seattle Fish Market. Saw some big fish get thrown around and were in the vicinity of the very first Starbucks. Didn’t bother to hunt out the Starbucks.
After brunch we wandered the streets and ended up in the Elliot Bay Book Company book shop. “The best bookshop in the world” – according to Nicole. We perused books for a while and Nicole noticed that there was a book reading in the afternoon by the author of a book she was looking at. So we decided we’d go.
So we stepped out, checked out some more sites, had another coffee and at 4:30pm we joined the 20 or so people waiting to hear Rolf Potts read from and discuss his latest book “Marco Polo Didn’t Go There”.
As a novice “book reading” attendee, I was impressed. He read a few passages from his book and then discussed a few of the background stories etc. It was interesting and very inspiring. And we could relate to his stories about India which were pretty funny.
As my stomach grumbled we decided that our second meal of the day was to be an early dinner. So we legged it down to Belltown and decided on a bar that served pizza. The decor was all about bikes – kinda interesting. The music was less interesting – American soft rock classics of the 1980s. But the pizza was cheap and so was the wine.
On Sunday we walked a full length marathon. With breakfast thrown in, a conservatory and Bruce Lee’s headstone. I was happy. I didn’t even know Bruce Lee (and Brandon) was buried in Seattle, but he is. I also didn’t know about Seattle’s link with Jimi Hendrix, but the Music Experience didn’t meet our requirements – it wasn’t free.
Also didn’t know that Seattle is in the King County – Nicole almost felt right at home. Although Seattle (and the King County) has less sheep than Te Kuiti in the King Country.
