After getting ready we walked down to the light rail station
where we bought a couple of day tickets so we could venture into Seattle’s town
and back. This train thing was pretty good for the price and we had soon made
the 14km trip into town and began to look around. The weather was much cooler
today and we were just hoping that the heavens wouldn’t open until we had done
with our exploring.
One of the first things we noticed when roaming the streets
was the large population of homeless people. We recalled San Francisco and how
we had disliked it for a day or two before we had come to quite like the place
and so we kept open minds as we walked along the streets. The first major place
we came to was the very famous Pike Place Market so we crossed the road to have
a look-see. This place was heaving and there was lots of shoving and many irritated
people trying to force their way through the gawping tourists stood around. We
were such tourists as we bided our time in front of the Pike Place Fish Market
waiting for someone to place an order – someone did. The cry of fresh salmon
was echoed by all the staff and then the salesperson flung the fish 15feet over
to one of the others who caught the fish in some outstretched paper before
finging the wrapped up bundle straight back. At this moment lots of camera
flashes went of and we realised that everyone else here had been waiting for
this moment also. This happened a few more times; with different cries being
hollered and echoed as different orders were placed but it all happened to
quickly for Corrie and her camera so we moved on. We continued through the
market and eventually made it back outside where we saw what is, supposedly,
the original Starbucks. Danny got an ice-cream from a neighbouring shop and
Corrie got herself a milkshake before we continued our walk.
We soon found our way to Seattle Center which is a large
campus type space with museums and other places of entertainment. It is also
the location for the Seattle Space Needle tower. We had a look around here, not
failing to note yet more strange people roaming freely around. After grabbing
some pizza and sitting for a bit we decided to give the EMP (Experience Music
Project) Museum a go and purchased our tickets to have a look inside. The
museum was quite good but would really appeal to die-hard fans of: Jimmy
Hendrix, Nirvana, Rolling Stones and AC-DC.
After here we discussed going up the Needle but decided
against it as we have been up many towers during our travels. Today though was
overcast but another strong reason we decided against it was due to the fact
that this tower was actually a lot shorter than the rest of the cities
buildings so we thought the views wouldn’t really be that great. All the other
towers we’ve been up have allowed us to look out over the cities themselves and
take in the views for miles around. We thought we’d make our way back.
En-route we came across a large flow of people, all were
dressed in one of two ways: Very strangely or like gangsters! This flow of
people all seemed to be heading in one direction and so we followed them. We
soon arrived at the entrance to the hemp festival in a huge queue which involved a suggested entrance fee of $10
each, and a bag check. We decided to pass
on this event; it probably wouldn’t be the best of ideas to be surrounding
ourselves with thousands of paranoid and crazy people two days before we would be
heading home. So on we went.
We took the route along the waterfront most of the way back
to the station, passing many more bizarre humans along this route. We thought
that on our travels we would have also seen the majority of strange people that
are out in this world but clearly we were wrong about this too; We guess that
you’ve never seen it all!
Back at the airport area we got a Subway for tea and then
chilled the night in the motel.
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