After our Seattle parking assessment, we opted for public transportation to explore Seattle. We took a bus from the campground to a a park and ride along I90 where we transferred to another bus for the 20 minute ride downtown. We walked a few blocks to the Underground Tour - an irreverent and rollicking look at Seattle's history as told from an underground viewpoint. after Seattle's devastating fire in 1889, they rebuilt the city streets a full story above where they had been, but buildings were rebuilt at the original level, resulting in a waffle look. Streets were the ridges while buildings were in the depressions, with wooden ladders providing access from one block up and over the street to the next block. Walls between blocks ranged from 12 feet to more than 30! Eventually, sidewalks were built at street level, making basements out of the first stories. Great fun!
One major problem we discovered while on the underground tour was our camera died and it is all my fault. The previous day I was saying in an email that I had never learned all the bells and whistles on the camera and it would probably break before I got around to checking that item off my bucket list. Hmmm, next day it is absolutely dead. Just like when I say stupid things on the golf course, like, "I usually drive pretty well on this hole"...guess what happens. So, no Underground photos.
We next walked up to the Market to see the gorgeous flower stalls, junk vendors and amazing fish and fresh vegetable stands and used my phone to snap a photo of the original Starbucks.
The crowds were intense, and it took a while to negotiate our way through the narrow aisles in the market.
We walked a couple blocks uphill (think San Francisco hills) to the monorail that whisked us north to Seattle Center and the Space Needle. Crowds were huge and we found out that a Bite of Seattle (similar to our Taste of Charleston) was going on at Seattle Center. The lines to get tickets to the Needle were huge, so we decided to splurge on a late lunch at the revolving restaurant which allowed us to bypass the lines waiting to get to the observation deck. Wonderful lunch and fabulous views of Seattle, Mt. Rainier and Mt. Baker, but our cellphone photos couldn't do justice.
Back to the campground, exhausted and happy.
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