April 29, first day in Seattle

After breakfast at - you've guessed it - Starbucks (well, there is one right next to our hotel!), we took a taxi down to Pike Street Market. It's a lovely old area and there you can find the original Starbucks, which was opened in 1912 and apparently remains virtually the same as it always was, as cultural heritage rules in this area prevent any significant changes.

We didn't actually go in on this occasion because it was a Sunday morning and the place was heaving, but we're planning to return tomorrow morning when it should be quieter. In fact, apart from the crowds in the Pike Street area, the whole city seemed quiet today.

After wandering around for a while, we drifted up to Pioneer Square, where we discovered that you can join an "Underground Seattle" tour. In  1889 (I think) large swathes of Seattle were wiped out by a fire. Not long after rebuilding commenced it was decided to raise the level of the streets in the waterfront area by one or two storeys to overcome the problem of high tides periodically flooding the area and drenching it in sewage. This meant that the first one or two storeys of the buildings here were buried, but they are still there below the current street level and can be toured. Once again, however, we arrived to find the ticket office crammed full, so decided to postpone for 24 hours.

However, outside the ticket office was a young chap advertising walking tours, and as he only had one customer at that point, we decided to join him. It turned out to be a very interesting hour or so. Here are a couple of the highlights...

This is the Smith Tower, which was the tallest building in America when first completed. The pyramid on the top is a three-storey penthouse owned by a local socialite, whose name I forget. More interesting is the building bottom left. This is a multi-storey car park known to the locals as "the sinking ship" for obvious reasons. This stands on the site of a famous old hotel, and when the hotel was demolished to make way for this monstrosity there was such an uproar from the public that a movement was started to preserve all the other old buildings. That's why so many of them have survived and why this part of Seattle is so charming today.

This road (that's the base of the Smith Tower on the left) is on an incline coming down towards the camera and in the very old days loggers used to slide tree trunks down the muddy slope to the timber mills at the bottom. It therefore became known as "Skid Row". Because of all the lumberjacks and other men working in the area, brothels, gambling halls and saloons sprung up all around, which is why "Skid Row" became synonymous with seediness and, eventually, destitution.

According to our guide, these dockside cranes were the inspiration for the giant walking robots (I forget their name) in Star Wars.

After the walking tour, we walked up the hill to the Space Needle. It's celebrating its 50th birthday this year, having been built for the 1962 Worlds Fair, so we paid our $19 (each!) and travelled to the top. The views are great, and what we noticed is that, apart from the downtown section with all the usual high rise buildings, most of Seattle is low rise, and there are plenty of ground level car parks. They clearly haven't tried to exploit every square inch of the real estate, which gives the whole place a feeling of spaciousness.

The Space Needle under a cloudy sky.

The central business district, seen from the Space Needle. Frasier's apartment is in there somewhere!

From near the base of the Space Needle, you can join the "Duck" tour, which runs you around town and the local Union Lake, in a World War II amphibious vehicle. The tour was quite interesting, especially the bit on the lake, but the whooping and hollering of the passengers, drummed up by a real performer of a driver and exacerbated by the fact that more than half the people on board had purchased duck squawkers from the ticket office, took the edge off a bit.

Floating homes moored around the edge of Union Lake.

At 6.20, on  the recommendation of the walking tour guide, we took the ferry across Puget Sound to a place called Bainbridge. It's cheap - only $7.50 return each - there are plenty of restaurants in Bainbridge, and on the return journey (the ferries run every half hour until about 1am) you get a great night time view of the Seattle skyline. Only one problem - the guide forgot to mention that nearly everything in Bainbridge closes on a Sunday! We therefore had to wait for a return ferry (they only run every hour) and made our way up to the Hard Rock Cafe on Pike Street for a welcome supper.

Jen's bit: Ok, I admit it, I have reached my spiritual home, the birthplace of Starbucks. The truth is I prefer Cafe Nero in London but, having seen some of this blog over the weeks, it does seem as though Starbucks and I are connected at the hip. Jx

PS If I crane my neck whilst lying in bed can see the Space Needle - we are definitely in Seattle