Our last morning in Richmond! We woke up bright and early, packed the last of our things and hit the road, enjoying what would be my last Flat White for a while.
Getting out of Richmond proved easy enough as we were heading against the flow of commuter traffic and before we knew it we had arrived at the Canada-US border. Despite telling the border agent that we would not be leaving the US until early September, the entire transaction was quick and painless. Next stop, downtown Seattle.
Arriving into the Seattle area, one can’t help but be struck by the hills upon which everything is built. In fact, the hills in the city used to be much steeper as we learned during our tour, the first activity of the day.
We started the “Beneath the Streets” tour at 102 Cherry Street in Pioneer Square, the city’s oldest district. The tour focuses on Seattle’s birth, explaining why this district exists one floor beneath street level and taking participants into that lower level, which was the first floor of these original buildings.
In addition to all that, we saw some street level sights, including Occidental Avenue and a really well done memorial to four fallen firefighters who lost their lives due to arson. The most surprising spot was the Waterfall park, which was a donation to commemorate the creation of UPS. If your’e in Seattle, we strongly recommend the tour.
From there, we hit Pike Place Market. What an amazing and massive place. There’s the Pike Place Fish Market, famous for tossing fish (we saw it and hopefully captured some video), the original Starbucks, butchers, produce vendors, and everything else you can imagine, including a ton of restaurants.
From there we jumped on the free shuttle, courtesy of the Downtown Seattle Association to haul us to the base of the Space Needle and the gallery showing Chihuly, which was what we did first.
Jaw. On. Floor. Mind. Blown. The Chihuly Gardens exhibit was all that and more. The pieces themselves are enough to leave one dumbstruck, but the installation and lighting are just as impressive. Imagine moving and setting up all that glass!?
Our last stop was the ride up the space needle, but before that, some food at the cafe attached to the facility presenting the Chihuly stuffs.
Inset in each table are things that Chihuly collects. Weird little thinks like figurines or the shaving cream brushes in our table could be seen. Similarly, the typewriters above our heads were also things he collects.
Last stop, Space Needle where we enjoyed a nice view of the city and stood on the revolving floor.
That marked the end of our day in Seattle. We drove to the suburb/industrial district and crashed for the night, which is what I’m going to do now.