May 1 2012, last full day in Seattle

Firstly, an apology. Although this post was written in  Seattle, I'm now posting from California, where we have arrived at a B & B just outside Yosemite National Park. The wi-fi signal here is weak, and I have so far been unable to upload photographs. At worst, I will slot them in as soon as we reach somewhere with a decent signal, but for now you will have to put up with text only.

We started the day by taking a taxi down to Pike Place Market, where we had breakfast in a cafe overlooking Puget Sound. We had intended to have breakfast in the original Starbucks, which had been so busy the day before, but when we got there we discovered that it is tiny inside and only offers a take-out service. It was chilly and windy outside, hence our choice of a proper cafe.

After breakfast we walked the five blocks or so down to Pioneer Square to buy tickets for the Underground Tour. It was interesting and a bit weird. Apparently, when they first decided to raise levels to overcome the problem of periodic flooding, they only raised the street level, leaving the sidewalks where they were. This, as anybody with more than one brain cell could have foreseen, caused problems (more than one Seattlite told us, with a slightly perverted sense of pride, that  Seattle is famous for getting things wrong). One of the more obvious problems was that if you wanted to go from the street into one of the buildings, you had to climb anywhere between 10 and 30 feet down ladders that were installed at each corner, not to mention climbing back up again afterwards. This was especially unpopular with women carrying young children and/or shopping. Also, horse-drawn vehicles had a habit of plummeting over the edge if the horses were spooked by anything, and, let's face it, horses are always being spooked by something or other.

So eventually, some kind of common sense prevailed and the gap between the roads and the buildings was bridged by new sidewalks at street level, meaning that the original ground floor storey of the buildings was hidden, and it was then possible to enter the buildings at what had been the first floor level. In quite a bit of the area around Pioneer Square it is still possible to walk around on the original sidewalks, immediately underneath the present ones, and also go into the buildings at that level. Some of these spaces are still used as basement storage for the buildings above, but many are derelict.

After the tour we visited a couple of department stores (they have Macy's here, where, no matter what item you select, the staff are all trained to tell you what a great choice you've made and in fact they have one themselves and it's absolutely marvellous and you are going to be so thrilled with it etc etc).

In the evening we visited a bar in Pike Place Market for a couple of snifters before going on to eat in what turned out to be a really nice Asian-North American fusion restaurant called Wild Ginger. Then, back to the hotel to prepare for an early start tomorrow.