Continued from Seattle Day 2 Part 2.

OC woke up first today. She lifted the blinds, then nonchalantly uttered “shit” under her breath.

It’s raining outside, and this time it’s heavier than just a light drizzle. Seattle says hi.

The monorail that goes to the Space Needle. Not many people use it.

How strange. They are displaying a Taiwanese flag. I’d imagine that’s not PC.

I purposely walked this route just so we’d have to cross in front of Nordstrom, just to mess with OC because she loves shopping.

No time to shop, onward!

Back at Pikes Place Market. We are looking for another restaurant that HH had suggested.

Walked by this place, OC took a quick look and burst out laughing. Eh? She said that it’s a store that sells items made in Washington, but everything inside is just useless crap. LOL!

Some coffee at the original Starbucks.

I’ll tell you what’s different about this Starbucks. They have boxes of stuff stacked all over this location. Stacked so much that it feels cluttered and unorganized.

We couldn’t find our lunch spot restaurant, so we decided to look on our phones for better directions. Turns out the restaurant had closed its doors earlier this year. Oops. I guess we’ll just eat whatever catches our eyes and noses then.

Inside Pikes Place Market. All the stalls are open right now since it’s still earlier in the day.

The menu caught our eyes…Yes, it’s inside Pikes Place Market, and yes it’s a tourist trap, but we are hungry and we just want to eat some food.

Got a nice table by the window.

Rain rain rain. Makes me want to take a nap.

Food was very good, but also very expensive. $28!! Eek.

For a tourist trap, lunch sure was satisfying though. I love all the salmon that they offer up here. So fresh and so good.

After lunch, it was more walking.

More walking, and the rain keeps on getting bigger.

When I saw this from the corner of my eyes, the first thing that popped across my mind was Banksy.

Hmmm…

We are now in the Pinoneer Square neighborhood of Seattle. It’s one of the first areas of settlement for Seattle.

Kebab!!!!

Found this small free museum about the Goldrush. Seattle used to be the staging area for miners heading to Alaska.

I am worth about 12 million dollars more than OC. She’s cheap.

“All along the way were men and women…”. All along the way were men and whores for the men.

Nordstrom started his shoe store in Seattle.

This burning cigarette left over a sidewalk grate spoke to me. It said, “Some asshole littered me on the ground.”

We were exploring the neighborhood when we heard loud sounds of water splashing. Oh yeah, it’s Waterfall Park. It’s on my to-do list for Seattle. It’s a very small park of maybe half a block that has an artificial waterfall. It was very soothing and we sat around here to rest our feet a little.

I am sure she’s the very first person to have the bright idea to imitate the statue.

We came to Pioneer Square to see the Underground Tour. This area of Seattle used to have drainage issues, and after the big fire that destroyed much of Seattle in 1889, it was decided that they would raise the streets 15 feet, and the first levels of the buildings would become basements. The raising of the street levels coincides with the rebuilding of the buildings, so the entrances on the second floor were planned into the building plans.

Waiting for our tour to start.

It’s really raining now.

Purple glass skylights are all over the sidewalks here. This is the only light source to the underground sidewalks. These purple glasses are the original ones from the 1800s. Why purple though?

Down under we go. We are only touring a few of the accessible underground sidewalks. All the underground are own by the individual buildings, and the Underground Tour has only access to a few of these.

Steel I beams and arched brick hold up all the sidewalks above.

Underneath one of those purple skylights.

Up on the surface. The rain is really coming down now.

Into another building’s underground.

This looks to be a skylight. What’s up with the wedge shaped glass? Is it to direct the light in a certain direction?

As decoration, I guess the tour moved a bunch of relevant and period correct “junk” down here.

Bill Speidel, who started the underground tours also wrote Sons of the Profits.

The Underground Tour was pretty awesome. Learned lots about Seattle history. There used to be thousands of whores(they used the euphemism seamstress) who lived in Seattle and would service thousands of loggers who live in the area.

After the tour, it was raining pretty hard, we didn’t feel like walking halfway across town and getting soaked, so we took a cab. An Orange Cab.

Interesting building.

Lots of blogging and work awaits. Since the wifi in our hotel is, to used a term that I had coined before, slower than a three toed sloth with a broken toe, we decided to go to a coffee place across the street to use their wifi.

Doughnut!

Sat and stayed dry inside and got shit done while it rained outside. So glad for the sunny day yesterday.

After being on the computer for a couple of hours, we walked towards the Space Needle to see our last Seattle attraction.

Amazing what a black marker can accomplish. This world is now a better place.

OC using the giant umbrella that our hotel provides.

We meet again, Space Needle.

Ever since I saw one of his exhibits in Boston, I’ve been hooked.

The glasses pieces are all labeled. Not sure if they are labelled individually though.

The upside down pieces are held by metal cables.

This was one of my favorite exhibit. So out of this world.

Pretty amazing, to say the least. Even better since there’s not a whole room of people here so I can just sit on the floor and take the photo from down low. It’s the low tourist season here in the PNW since it’s the time of the year when they get constant rain.

Still raining outside. The rain accelerates and runs down from the window like little waterfalls.

This angle is great too, perhaps even better.

Outside in the garden. Unfortunately, it’s raining so I couldn’t take my sweet time.

One great benefit of the rain is the cool ground reflection.

Poor man’s Chihuly. They’ve got some small pieces of glass for sale in the gift shop and they go for $5000 plus. We asked how much the big chandeliers were, and were told well over half a million dollars! I guess I am not buying one this time.

On our walk back to the hotel, we made a stop for dinner. There were two potential restaurants in the area, a nicer American place, and a Thai place. The cheaper Thai place won out, mostly on price.

Well, when the food came, it turned out to be really really good!!! What a pleasant surprise. The service was really good and friendly as well. Money well spent, and money well saved. It rain all day, but that didn’t stop us from doing what we set out to do today. We said hi back to Seattle.

To be continued at Victoria Day 1.