A positive thread about Seattle...by a non resident! (Bellingham: hotel, home)

[Gentoo]

I'm sure many of you have been a bit bewildered by my defense of a city that I don't live in. It completely goes against what seems to be the norm for people on these forums who talk about cities they don't live in. Well let me tell ya, Seattle is a great place!

This thread is for people who like Seattle so please keep the negativity to one of the other 100 or so threads that have become dedicated to that.

*I know there's a thread called "what a great place we live in". However I don't live there so I giving Seattle props from a non resident point of view*

I stayed at the Comfort Suites on Roy st. A nice location because you can get to everything easily. From here, I walked up to 5th. Turned left and went down to Mercer. Crossed the street and when I looked down Mercer, I saw the most beautifully tree lined street! Unfortunately, I don't think I got a picture of this. Reminded me of a few streets in Berkeley. Once I crossed the street, I made my way to the Seattle center. This is a neat little area. I turned into it and saw some interesting structures:


Don't know what these are supposed to be but look at them. They're cool. it's just little things like this.

Then I turned around and saw the experience music project. This building trips me out. It can reflect colors in a way that I cannot understand lol



On this particular walk I did not go inside but I did later and the inside is trippy and cool as well:



And this was just the free areas I had access to as I didn't have enough to go into the pay areas.

Of course just past the experience is the space needle. I needed to go up the stairs to find an area for a good shot. Didn't like the agle of the sun at this time so I continued on my way. The weird thing about the outside of the experience on this southwest side are the various recordings of hawk species I kept hearing just before I passed under the monorail.

As I passed the needle, the Seattle Center yielded a small but very pretty little park:


From here I would continue down the street (forget the name of it now) toward the waterfront.

That's in a following post

[Gentoo]

Once at the waterfront (where I went a day before), I decided to check out Olympic sculpture park. I simply did what comes naturally to me, I just started walking with no real destination in mind. People were jogging, relaxing, walking their dogs and having a nice time in general. I'm a birder and did my share of birding and snapping shots of birds (gulls in this case). After walking aimlessly for a while, I turned back, knowing that I wanted to see more of the waterfront than I did the day before. I was alone this day as my somewhat intransigent travel partner was leaving out of Friday Harbor for a whale watching tour.

I observed all the sculptures but some were a little bewildering:


Random "&" sign. If it's discovery weren't enough:


It rotates in the wind! Notice the neon lights in it? Seattle natives, please tell me what this is? lol

Then of course there was the father and son fountain-statue that was explained to me a while ago:


Another cool sculpture. I thought, "if this park is this cool, what's the rest of the waterfront like?" I'd soon find out.

I would then make my way to the Aquarium. The only picture I edited so far from in there is this one:


Gotta love the jellyfish tube!

[Gentoo]

After the Aquarium, I decided to book an Argosi harbor cruise. I ate some fish and chips at the same place I had a really good fish taco the day before. I ate while waiting for the cruise to leave.

Once on the boat, I had my camera and lenses in overdrive. Normally I carry to bodies with different lenses but my travel partner borrowed one for her ww trip. I was switching lenses like crazy but here's what I was able to get while on the cruise:







Just to show a few.

After the cruise I decided to walk up and down Alaskan Way and take in the sites. Here are a few shots from that excursion:


The architecture here is awesome


Looking south down Alaskan way from Anthony's

later, I would catch a beautiful sunset over Elliot Bay as it slipped behind the Olympic Mountains:




Tomorrow, it's Pike's Place market!

[Gentoo]

I would end up at the waterfront again. This time with my travel partner who would join me later. I got in touch with a friend of mine who moved to Bellingham and was in Seattle for this weekend. We decided to have coffee. She took me to Tully's. I had the best Mocha milkshake ever!

After this, I headed to PP Market. What a wonderful experience that place is:


After my travel partner finished a beverage at Seattle Best Coffee, we headed into the world famous fish market:


We got out our cameras and hoped to catch the Salmon tosses. Of course this is easier said than done but it allowed us to watch for a long time. As long as we were there, they never dropped a fish and these were good sized salmon they were tossing:


Ryan tosses one then:



He catches one not long after. it was really cool to watch!

From here we checked out all of the fish markets and what they were selling:







This monk fish was funny; they would hide and pull on it, scaring the hell out of people walking by lol

From there there were also the various farmers markets which make up the upstairs portion of PP market:



There were also the various other vendors:


Ah tie-dies, reminds me of home lol



nice jugs lol



Then of course there were the street performers:


There's a cool little park (yes Seattle is filled with parks, it's not called the emerald city for nothing lol) which as at the end of Pike Place Market. It has a couple of cool totem poles. Unfortunately, I have no idea where those pictures are

Then I would return to the hotel but got a really cool building reflection on the way:


The next stop, space needle

[Gentoo]

Here it is at a better angle:


I was nervous as I'm afraid of heights. I decided to get the day-night pass. Why not? I could get some cool shots at dusk. As we walked up the long ramp, we were stopped. It's great to know that there are bag checks in case someone decides to get crazy. We then got to our elevator.

Holy crap! 10 miles per hour?!?! Wow I felt like a canon shell but it was cool. This is cool! For the first time, my fear of heights didn't bother me. Take at look at this view:


Awesome isn't it?

Here's Lake Union:


After I got down, I went back to the hotel and waited for nightfall. Then I walked back to the space needle. After passing the experience, I managed to get this:



Perhaps my favorite shot from this whole trip. Then I got gorgeous views of the city:


Same as the day shot earlier. I made sure I stood in the same spot on the deck as ealier


Dusk over Elliot Bay


The next day, it would be the Woodland Park Zoo and Discovery park

[Gentoo]

We had to move quickly, we were leaving this day.

I won't post too many zoo pics of zoo animals. e've all seen them I will say that the Woodland Park Zoo has a very fitting name. It's seriously in a forested park. Of the four zoos I've now been to, it's perhaps the smallest (either it or Oakland's) but it's by far the most beautiful of the four. Here's one shot of an Orix:



Discovery Park would be the last thing for us to do in Seattle.

This is a large Park. It's perhaps slightly larger than Balboa Park in San Diego (if you don't include Florida Canyon). It's smaller then Central park in New York and smaller still than Golden Gate Park in San Francisco, the largest of these urban parks.

However, Discovery park is the wildest. Meaning it's closest to nature and not surrounded by urban conjestion as the other three parks are.

Balboa park, too many buildings No real nature. Central park is a lake surrounded by urban forest. Golden Gate park has grand Redwood and Cedar trees but it interrupted periodically by roads and occasional buildings. It has several lakes and pond though.

Discovery Park didn't have any lakes that I was able to find but it has a nice, quite wild forest feel to it. So much so that my partner thought she might find bear scat.

The bus let us off at a cool spot where the trees beckoned us:


We hiked up and down rugged trails. I love this type of thing! The forest were interrupted not by roads or buildings, but by meadows:


Awesome isn't it?

We then found our way to the south beach:



beaches are so much better when they're left wild.

There was the lighthouse:


I heard no other name for it other than "The Lighthouse"

[Gentoo]

The only thing not mentioned here was my trip down to Lake Union. It required me crossing Aurora Ave. Yeah good luck with that. That street is wrong and I had to walk a half mile to go up 500 stairs then go down 1500 more stairs. Then I had to take those stairs back.

Of course the day I went to the zoo I discoverd I could go under Aurora on Mercer st. LOL Just my luck.

I discovered that Seattle isn't designed for tourist necessarily. Tourist just love it for what it is. Locals use all the places I went to, in fact a lot of them are used by locals only for the most part. This isn't to say that tourist won't like Seattle; quite the contrary, everyone seemed to love it. People in the hotel kept talking about what a great city it is.

My experience here just barely scratched the service of Seattle.

I hope I did this city justice.

[texastrigirl]

Thanks for sharing. Your pictures show what a beautiful, vibrant city Seattle is!

[iskray917]

Very nice pictures, and also nice to hear from a fellow Californian who enjoys it here ..... god knows we've been bombarded by those who don't

haha but thanks for sharing your trip.

[eskercurve]

Originally Posted by Gentoo

The only thing not mentioned here was my trip down to Lake Union. It required me crossing Aurora Ave. Yeah good luck with that. That street is wrong and I had to walk a half mile to go up 500 stairs then go down 1500 more stairs. Then I had to take those stairs back.

Of course the day I went to the zoo I discoverd I could go under Aurora on Mercer st. LOL Just my luck.

I discovered that Seattle isn't designed for tourist necessarily. Tourist just love it for what it is. Locals use all the places I went to, in fact a lot of them are used by locals only for the most part. This isn't to say that tourist won't like Seattle; quite the contrary, everyone seemed to love it. People in the hotel kept talking about what a great city it is.

My experience here just barely scratched the service of Seattle.

I hope I did this city justice.

I think you did! Pwright better look out, he's got a rival photographer if you decide to move here or come here more often, lol!

Thanks for visiting!