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| Joan on our harbor cruise with Seattle in background |
Thank goodness for
a new day.
After yesterday’s harrowing drive it was great to wake up to no rain
on Tuesday in Portland. It may be a brief respite as rain is set to return on
Wednesday in the northwest, but it was nice to drive from Portland to Seattle
without rain.
We had a nice
breakfast at the hotel in Troutdale, Oregon, a suburb of Portland, before
heading out for Washington.
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| Joan and the Moon jelly fish |
Instead of taking
the freeway for the first part of the trip I found an alternate route that
traveled along the Columbia River for a little extra scenery before we hopped
on I-5 to finish the short drive to Seattle.
One of the neat
things we saw were full sized homes built on floats in a housing “marina” on
the river. They looked like regular houses you would see in any middle-class
neighborhood but instead of a yard they were tied up or anchored to the shore
of the river. I wondered if they still had to pay property taxes.
Instead of heading
to our hotel (it was too early to check in) we headed downtown Seattle to do a
little sight-seeing. After leaving the
freeway the first thing I noticed were San Francisco type hills to drive on. I
remembered my days at Pacific Lithograph in San Francisco and driving a
delivery truck up and down those steep hills.
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| Joan touching in the touch pool |
With the help of
OnStar we made our way to the waterfront. With the weather cooperating on
Tuesday we decided that this would be the day to make the harbor tour and we
made the right choice. I was wearing my Atherton Police hat which immediately
got us a 20 percent discount on the tour tickets.
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| Pike Place Market |
Before we got to
the boat tour we had to find a place to park. This was not an easy thing to do,
especially since it is spring break here and every family in Washington was in
Seattle today, thanks to the good weather.
The first lot I pulled into was a $4 an hour
surface lot but the spaces were so tight the only spots I could find were
unusable. If you got into the space, you couldn’t open the door to get out. I
let Joan out before I backed into the space, but still it didn’t work as either
I couldn’t get out of my car or the car parked next to me could never get into
his.
So we drove around
the block and found a parking garage that had room. It cost us $24 to park
there all day, but it was better than having my car banged up from trying to
get in our out of it.
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| Dinner view first night |
After parking we
went and purchased our water tour tickets and had just enough time to eat the
picnic lunch we brought. We couldn’t take food or drink on the boat because
they sell food and drinks on the boat and obviously didn’t want the
competition.
After the tour,
which was really beautiful and informative we headed to the nearby Seattle
Aquarium where we spent the rest of the afternoon enjoying the fish, otters,
seals and other critters they have on display there. Not quite as good as the
Monterey Aquarium, but darned near.
Then we headed to
the Pike Place Market (near where we parked) and we walked up 156 steps to the
main market where we watched some men throwing fish back and forth to each
other and then found a nice restaurant for dinner – The Athenian, which has
been in business since 1909.
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| Joan on top of the world |
We both had fish
for dinner and then headed to our hotel to check in. It was a wonderful day,
with wonderful weather.
OK, so the
wonderful weather wasn’t going to hold for a second day, but Wednesday brought
overcast skies, a few sprinkles, but more fun in Seattle.
We played major
league tourist on Wednesday. We left our hotel around 9 a.m. and headed to
downtown Seattle hoping that most of the commute traffic was over. We still hit
a little traffic but with OnStar’s help we got to the Space Needle in time to
make the first trip up to the top.
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| My feet 520-feet up |
First a word about
Seattle parking. It’s expensive and it’s awful. I know I drive a big car, but
come on you can’t expect everyone to drive and park a Mini Cooper. The parking
spaces in the garages have been painted so close together than people deliberately
park over the lines so no one can park too close to them.
Seems like a
self-defeating system if people end up going all rogue and park where they want
because you haven’t left them enough room for a car or truck.
After squeezing my
truck into a small space (including folding my side mirrors in so I could get
an extra 4-inches closer to the pole) we headed to the Space Needle which was
right across the street. (By the way parking is $4 an hour, but they max it out
at $24 to $25 for the whole day – still a ridiculous sum for such a small
space.)
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| Chihuly Glass structure |
As I mentioned we
were at the Space Needle early and jumped on the first elevator headed up. In
just 45 seconds we were at the top and enjoying some fantastic views from about
60 stories up.
One of the amazing
new features of the Space Needle is a glass observation floor. I’ve become
better at conquering my fear of heights – partly because of all the high
altitude hiking I do – but I’ll admit it took me a few seconds to get the
courage to step out onto the glass floor.
After a while I
forgot about the glass floor, but every so often I would look down and it would
give you a funny feeling. Joan joined me on the floor and her solution was to
walk on the metal cross beams as if that would keep her from plunging 520-feet
should the glass suddenly break.
We spent about an
hour at the top and then headed back to earth for our next adventure.
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| More beautiful glass sculptures |
That next
adventure was a good one too. The Chihuly Glass Museum and Exhibition (and Garden)
is right next to the Space Needle and it was one of the most incredibly
beautiful things I have ever seen.
The artist, Dale Chihuly
is a native of Tacoma and creates some of the most unusual blown glass I have
ever seen. Many of the pieces have hundreds of different parts but work
together to make large and impressive art pieces. One of his Macchia bowls
retails for $8,500 so that is not in our budget. But if we were ever to hit the
lottery I would own one for sure.
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| Glass blowing exhibition |
I have to admit I
did imagine for a moment one of our grandsons, who is known for his deadly aim
with a ball, creating some major havoc in that museum if given the chance. Or a
crazy person with a baseball bat, but I didn’t dwell on that long.
Two women put on an
amazing glass blowing exhibition that helped answer many of our questions about
how these beautiful works were created. They
made a beautiful glass vase right in front of us and in just about 20 minutes.
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| Pop Culture Museum guitar tower |
After the glass museum
we headed back to the truck and ate our lunch in the parking garage in our
truck.
We decided to use our
last City Pass ticket on a trip to the Pop Culture Museum in the same area as
the Space Needle and Chihuly Museum.
It was an
interesting museum with exhibits on horror movies, science fiction movies (including
many props used in the Star Wars movies), musical groups like Pearl Jam,
Prince, Nirvana and Jimi Hendrix.
The horror movie
section was a little troubling and we wondered why people were bringing really
young children through there.
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| Monorail to downtown |
One of my favorite
parts of the museum was a tower of more than 700 instruments stacked together
to make a tower of guitars, etc. that reached up two floors.
When we were done
there we caught the monorail downtown and then walked back to the Waterfront
where we had dinner at Ivan’s “Acres of Clams” Restaurant. We had a leisurely
dinner watching downtown workers commuting home on a succession of ferry boats.
After dinner we
crossed the street and caught one of the free Waterfront shuttle buses that took
us back to our parking garage near the Space Needle.
It’s always good to have Joan with me but even more so when we can use the HOV lane (high occupancy vehicle) to whiz by all the traffic.
With commute
traffic thinning out we jumped on the freeway and returned home our hotel near
the Sea-Tac Airport to rest. Tomorrow really does start our trip home and we
are watching the weather closely to make sure we don’t get caught in some of
the storms sweeping across the country.
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| Dinner view night 2 |
Destination on Thursday is Helena,
Montana.
Mileage out at Portland: 9817
Time out from Portland: 9:15 a.m.
Mileage in at Seattle: 10012
Time in at Seattle: 7 p.m.
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