Sightseeing in the land of Starbucks

Day 11
Friday, June 25, 2010
Sightseeing in Seattle

We woke to a 56-degrees, diaphanous, misty drizzle that was so light it would have taken a half-hour to get a person’s shoulders wet. It probably sounds worse than it was. By the time we finished breakfast, it had stopped and soon after the streets were dry.

The forecast was for overcast skies and temps in the mid 60s and no rain, so we decided to make today our sightseeing day in Seattle. We essentially repeated the rounds that Frank and Bob made two days ago, but Frank benefited from experience and was able to improve it a little.

We parked near the southern end of First Avenue and boarded the ferry to Bainbridge Island as pedestrians. Frank knew that we could get by on the island without a car and walking on board saved some money. The four of us spent two hours touring Winslow. We ate a snack and drank coffee at Bainbridge Bakers before returning to Seattle on the 2:05 ferry.

Once back downtown, we caught a bus to the vicinity of the Space Needle. Frank decided to skip a trip to the top in favor of reading a magazine and listening to a Bolivian band dressed in traditional red ponchos playing italaques (pictured), violins, guitars and mandolins—very cool.

We rode Seattle’s monorail from City Center, as the former World’s Fair district is now known, to a mall located a few blocks from the Pike Place Market. As is the case with almost any aspect of the city you care to measure, Seattle’s open-air markets are much more robust and apparently healthy than those in Baltimore and DC. Seattle is clearly a bustling, vibrant, vigorous city that has held on to its middle class. It’s amazing to see how wonderful a middle-class city can be.

We toured the market, watched the guys toss fish and then found a seafood restaurant for dinner. We were amazed that we could find a table with a view of Puget Sound at 6 PM on a Friday night—no waiting. The food was quite good and the atmosphere was informal but view brought it up a notch.

After dinner bought some tee shirts, produce and walked to the first Starbucks store. It was actually surprisingly unadorned and small. The store opened in 1971 and gave birth to the largest coffee company in the world. Perhaps the thing that made it interesting was the prominent use of the Starbucks legacy logo.

It was a great first day of vacation as a family.