Our ship docked at 7.30am on Friday and we chose to carry our own luggage and be first off. So we grabbed our bags and met our bus, which took us back to our faithful Freddie the RV. It was with relief that we found all as we left it. After stowing our stuff we locked Freddie up and headed straight into Seattle for a day of sightseeing. We had paid parking until 4.00pm to took the great opportunity to see Seattle.
Our first stop was Starbucks for coffee and free wifi. Once we had made earthly connection, we headed to Pike Place Markets.
I had read about them and was looking forward to seeing if the hype was real. Yes! It was. The fresh produce screamed ‘eat me, eat me’. You could smell the juicy peaches, cherries, raspberries, blueberries, tomatoes, strawberries (I think you get it by now) and the flowers were beautiful and so cheap. The fishmongers are a sight you wouldn’t believe. Firstly their produce is abundant and fresh, and displayed so dramatically on ice and in tubs of freezing water – so theatrical and then they start ‘throwing the fish’ – I’m still not sure why but it attracts a crowd and then the fishmongers start chatting with the customers. One guy said, “Ask me a question, any question, I now lots of stuff?” and people just started asking random questions and this guy answered them. It was really funny.
We left Pike Place and headed uptown, checked out different shops and historical buildings then caught the monorail to the Seattle Centre. Johno had heard about a music exhibition so we went to the EMP - Museum of Music, Sci-Fi and Pop Culture.
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| roof of performance centre |
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| guitar sculpture |
There are three main exhibitions, one about Jimi Hendrix, one about Nirvana (both Hendrix and Nirvana have roots in Seattle) and then a sci-fi exhibit on the technology, imagination and science behind the film, Avatar.
The Hendrix display was fascinating with his costumes, guitars and song sheets, and lots of other memorabilia. There was also gallery featuring the history and development of the guitar with about a hundred different instruments on display. Amazing!!
In the foyer there was also a 35ft sculpture made of over 600 guitars and other musical instruments. So very impressive.
After spending some hours at the EMP we took the lift to the top of the Space Needle, some 520 ft above the ground to the observation deck where we got an amazing 360o view of Seattle. The Space Needle was build for Seattle’s World Fair in 1962 and is desgned was to withstand a wind velocity of 200 miles per hour.
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| space needle |
After leaving the Space Needle we made a very hasty dash back to the RV so we didn’t get charged more for parking and headed out of the city to an RV Park. The next morning we got going again early and went back into Seattle to take a cruise, visit the aquarium and return to Pike Place Markets for another more thorough scout around, just in case we missed something.
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| seattle city skyline |
The cruise was really interesting and we learned a lot from our informative guide. One thing that was surprising to us was that we could clearly see Mt Rainier, an active volcano in the mountains south of Seattle and we were told that people living there only see it on exceptional sunny days.
We tried to meet up with a friend of Ryan’s in the city but our timing was off so we headed back out to Kent. We had a great time in Seattle but were keen to get back on the road so the very next day, we finally unpacked from the cruise, restocked the RV and headed north towards the Canadian rockies.
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| Seattle Aquarium |
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| sea lion at aquarium |
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| leaving Seattle |
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