And then Seattle

After the cruise, we stayed a few days in Washington state before heading back home. Seattle is a lovely city. I had expected rain - everyone knows it's always raining there, right? - but we were surprised by three days of sunshine and 90 degree temps. The locals seemed just as confounded. The lead stories on the news were:
1. Boeing lost a contract.
2. The Copper River salmon were in season.
3. It was sunny.

We walked around downtown and admired the architecture
If you insist on doing more than stare at buildings, they've got that covered too. We went on the underground tour, which I would highly recommend (if you have allergies though, be warned, it's kinda moldy and dank). The long and short of it was that for a while, Seattle had a sort of underground arcade area when the sidewalk of the old city were covered up by the sidewalks of the new city. It was kinda dark down there, so they put in some skylights, which, from the streets above looked like this:
I don't think it did much good - still pretty dim down below.
Since people didn't really take to doing business in the dark, lot of the underground got shut down. However, some businesses still make use of the extra space, like Pike Place Market.
It's really pretty inside the market. There are flowers, fresh produce, meat and dining on the street level and they use their underground space too for shops and more restaurants. Luckily enough, it turned out the Seattle Cheese Festival was that weekend. Mmmm, me gusta queso. Festival or no, there's plenty to see there. You could probably amuse yourself all day long with people-watching.

We rode the monorail to the Space Needle to have dinner at the revolving restaurant there. It's a very short ride, maybe a couple of minutes to go about a mile.
The Space Needle entrance fee's a bit steep. I know that, coming from DC, I always find it weird to have to pay admission fees for landmarks and museums. The views are really nice though, and the food's very good too, so maybe that makes up for it. Remember the Copper River Salmon? I had it for dinner on a bed of tri-color potatoes.
I think it's the best seafood I've ever had. Even better than the awesome grilled Coho salmon we had in Juneau, or the scallops with deep fried capers we had at Tulio the night before - hey, just because I wasn't on the ship didn't mean I stopped eating ;)

Just like on the Sears Tower trip, I saw a weird red sculpture from very far away:
We also had a view of the final stop on our trip (look over the horizon...)
Next time, Mount Rainier, the absolutely last post of this darn vacation, I promise!