Phil and I went on a tour of the Seattle Underground. To be honest, I had never heard of this. So here's my quick recap. The first settlers came to the Seattle area and wanted to expand the business area along the bay. They filled in the low tide water areas with saw dust. (Seattle was a large lumbering area.) Anyway, they covered the sawdust with concrete and had a business district along the bay. Well, the place was always flooding and then a cabinet maker accidentally set the entire downtown on fire and Seattle was burnt to the ground. This was around 1900. Everyone decided to build Seattle better. Their plan was to build the city above sea level by building the walls up and making the current city 15 foot higher than the old, burnt up city. The tour guide described the building site like a waffle. The pockets where the syrup pools was the old city and the ridges where the butter is spread was the floor for the new city. The walls were 15 foot high and fun fact: No lives were lost during the devastating fire that destroyed the city but 17 people died from falling off the walls.
The woman with the curly hair was our guide for the Seattle Underground tour. She was excellent. At one point she asked if any of us had noticed the panels in the street with the small circles. When she told us that they were glass circles, she asked if any of us thought they provided much light for the underground levels. Our group pretty much thought 'No' since the circles of glass were dark and small.
The round circles are actually the ends of prisms which stick beneath the street and refract the sunlight into the lower levels.
Yes, lots of good light!
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Now for the Space Needle:
Here we are at the Space Needle. It's lovely. We didn't go up to the top because it was late in the day and the line was enormous. We did get some food in a near by shop and then headed to Pike's Market - another Seattle tourist spot.
Pike's Market Place:
Pike's Market Place was booming! People were everywhere. There were so many people that it made it hard to figure out what was actually available in the market. Imagine, standing in one spot and as you turn, you are face to face with another human being. We did not stay here long. We just came by to see what the market place looked like. I will add that they had a flower stand there that was one of the best that I have ever seen. There were all kinds of flowers available for bouquets. And the ladies behind the counter, gathering flowers into bouquets were amazing to watch. It was a show, if not the show of the market.
End of the day:
At the end of the day, we caught the bus back to where our Airbnb was located. We trudged a couple of streets from the bus stop, climbed the dirt path, crossed the sidewalk and climbed the haphazard stone steps and made our way to the deck. Luckily, we were just in time to watch the sunset over the bay. At about this same time, a young (twentyish) couple climbed the same stone steps and joined us on the deck. They were Ben and Jesse from Austin, Texas. They were a sweet, mannerly couple who were vacationing in Seattle for several days and they too were staying at this Airbnb. Ben told us that he had gotten a text from Haley (the homeowner) and she wanted to somehow conduct a 'Safety Meeting' with the four of us, sometime this evening. We all looked at each other like 'WTH.' So Ben called her -
she was vacationing in Hawaii with a friend - and the safety meeting began. First off, she asked if we had all read over the paper with the safety instructions on it? Between you and me, I never even noticed it. So Ben goes into the house and finds the safety list instructions on the dining table. Yeah, the table packed high with her assortment of junk. And though I was present for the 'Safety Meeting' and I do recall that we read down the list with Haley just to be sure we all knew - safety. I can only remember two things from her safety instructions. One, the fire hydrants were sitting beside the upstairs bathroom door - which was easy to remember because that is what your eye is focused on as you climb the stairs to the bedroom. And second, she actually said that in case of an earthquake, someone should go down into her basement and turn off the gas. Ok, Wow. What are the odds? This woman had no lighting for us to find her residence during a night time arrival but wants someone to risk their life to save her home during an earthquake?
Around 1PM, I was still laying awake. My back was hurting so much. I had watched a YouTube video before we left which said that one should use ice packs on a pulled muscle and later switch to hot packs. At some point, I decided to get up and get some ice and somehow make myself an icepack. I went to the kitchen, opened the freezer door and immediately noticed a gel pack in the door. This is exactly what I needed. So I stood for a moment and pondered. Haley's instructions were to, "Ask permission first - don't even think about apologies later - ask permission first." Suddenly, I pulled that gel pack out of the freezer, grabbed a linen napkin from the kitchen shelf to wrap the gel pack in and went upstairs to bed. I was at my wit's end and needed some sleep. In the morning, I wiped the gel pack off and put it back where I found it. This will be our secret.
And that was our first full day in Seattle.
