Day 1: Seattle

What a great day today.  It was in the 70s and sunny, which I understand is not all that usual for Seattle. 

We drove in to the city today, which is about 15 minutes from our hotel.  We parked by the Space Needle and were in one of the first elevator up to the top.  When you're fresh off the east coast and your body is 3 hours ahead, it's easy to be first on line for a 10:00 opening.  The Space Needle was built for the 1962 Worlds Fair.  The view from the top is quite nice and we had some nice weather to see the sights.  On the horizon we just caught a glimpse of the huge Mt Rainier towering over the buildings.  The Space Needle is the iconic structure of Seattle.  you can buy almost anything with the Space Needle's famous profile on it, and we got a water bottle and pen.

 

After that we went to the Chihuly Garden and Glass exhibit next door. Dale Chihuly is a renowned glass artist and he produces large chandeliers and outdoor installations. The indoor exhibits are stunning and the outdoor gardens are gorgeous. I took like 100 photos just of the glass today.

We decided to take the monorail (also built for the 62 Worlds Fair, first large scale monorail in the US) downtown to go to Pikes Market. We walked down to Pikes Market which was packed (oh yea, Saturday on Labor Day Weekend) and watched them throwing fish at the fish mongers.

Then we walked down to Pike Brewing Company and Pub. After lunch, we went on the "Underground Seattle Tour". It seems that before a big fire that burned most of Seattle in 1889, the downtown used to flood with backed up sewerage at high tide. So when they rebuilt the city, they decided to raise the street level by 15 feet. But the merchants were anxious to start rebuilding their buildings so they raised the street in between the new buildings then built new sidewalks over top the old sidewalks down at sea level. Underground Seattle is a tour of the old below-ground sidewalks and old building ground floors, which are now the basements. Fascinating.

 

We walked back along the waterfront and went to find a Sports Bar to watch the Rutgers Football game. Rutgers had a little trouble with Tulane, but in the end won comfortably (GO RU!)

At night, they light up the outside Chihuly Garden which gives another dimension to the georgeous glass garden.  We stopped by on our way back to the car for another look and photo op.  The pictures don't begin to do it justice.

Hope you enjoyed our photos.  I took 120 this first day.  At that rate I should have no problem matching the 2000 we took on our trip to Africa :)  I'll try to avoid giving you a play by play every day so as not to bore you.  Thanks for checking in!