Day 6 (Day 2 in Seattle): Suddenly Aaron Doesn’t Feel So Special Anymore

Why don’t I feel as special, you may be asking? Back in Oklahoma, the Prius is a relatively unusual car, but here in Seattle it seems like every fourth or fifth car is a Prius. This is definitely a more liberal town that Oklahoma City, in more ways than one. When we got to our hotel room yesterday, I turned on the TV and the station was the Seattle IndyMedia Center station playing a documentary on how the banking industry controls the world. And the local independent weekly newspaper featured an article on the best sex toys. Only in Seattle.

We stopped for coffee and a cinnamon roll at Seattle’s Best Coffee. I know what everyone is saying: You were in Seattle and you didn’t go to Starbucks? We have seen a ton of Starbucks (and Seattle’s Best, and Tully’s, and a dozen other independent coffee shops), and actually visited the very first Starbucks, but when we were ready to have breakfast, we didn’t see a Starbucks before we saw the Seattle’s Best. The caramel mocha and the cinnamon roll were very good. Before going to Pike Place Market, we browsed Metsker’s Maps, a neat little map store.

Most of our morning was spent at Pike Place Market, the nation’s oldest farmer’s market. They are actually celebrating their centennial this year, as is Oklahoma. We walked around the market area for about 2 and a half hours. This place is crammed with everything from fish markets, flower stalls, Russian restaurants, cheescake stores, and arts and crafts vendors. You literally could spend a week or two just exploring this area, but we only had a couple of hours. We took the 12:30 water taxi to Alki Beach, which is roughly where the first settlers of Seattle settled until they decided that the land across Elliott Bay would be better suited for settlement. The fish and chips next to the dock were excellent.

After the water taxi ride, Carrie and I went back to the hotel room and dropped off the fruit we bought in Pike Place. Our next stop was the Bank of America tower in downtown. It has 76 stories (over 1,000 feet) and the observation deck is on the 73rd story. It only cost 5 dollars (the Space Needle cost 14 dollars), and there was no line, but my God, what a view. It was truly stunning. You literally could see Tacoma about 25 miles to the south and the Cascade and Olympic mountain ranges. We really wanted to stay longer, but we needed to visit the library.

The new Seattle Central Library opened in 2004. It is really an unusual building, designed by a world-renowned architect, Rem Koolhaas. It has several pieces of art inside, the escalators (yeah, it has escalators) are color coordinated to draw your eye to what conveys people, and the coolest feature is the near-completely automated book sorting system. In fact, the 4-minute video we watched about the sorting system was one of the highlights of our trip to Seattle!

After leaving the library we took the bus out to the Japanese garden on the northeast side of town. It was very peaceful and the koi were gianormous. On the recommendation of the Japanese garden ticket-taker, we walked the alleged 1.5 mile distance to Volunteer Park and the Asian Art Museum. After at least 2 or 3 miles of walking, mostly uphill, we finally arrived at the park too exhausted to visit the museum. So we just went up the water tower in the park, and learned a little about Frederick Law Olmstead, the father of landscape architecture, his son, and the history of Seattle’s park system.

We caught the bus back downtown, went out to dinner at the Icon Grill, where we had a vastly overpriced and not very good dinner. Carrie and I were exhausted and just passed out in the room.

Check out our day's photo haul below:

Day 6

--BDC