On Friday, July 30th, we walked down to the Pike Place Market for breakfast. We got cappucinos at Storyville Coffee and drank them at a table on the plaza there. Afterwards, we got pastries from Le Panier.
We went through the well-known and fabulous market, picking up a few gifts, but mostly just wandering and looking. The famous fish-throwing was not in evidence. It had been stopped for the pandemic, and had apparently not come back into full swing. Thirty years ago, the last time I was in Seattle, I bought Mary Joy some smoked salmon at the market. We wore masks, in the crowd, but not many other people did.
From decks behind the market buildings, you can look out over the waterfront.
On the way back to our hotel, we stopped at an unusual church: Christ Our Hope Catholic Church, in a former hotel on Second Avenue. We went in and prayed for a few minutes.
We checked out of our hotel, leaving our luggage, and
walked the few blocks to the Monorail station, at the Westlake shopping center,
off of Pine Street. The Monorail, like
the Space Needle, is a survival from the 1962 World’s Fair. It was used to shuttle people from downtown to
the fairgrounds (now called “Seattle Center”).
The Monorail has only one stop, near the foot of the Space Needle.
We didn’t go up Space Needle. I had done that in 1989. It is expensive, and the guidebooks say that
you can get just as good a view (better, because it includes the Space Needle) for
free from Kerry Park, in the Queen Anne District (though, on this trip, we didn’t
go there, either).
We walked over to Chihuly Garden and Glass, a museum for the work of world-famous Seattle glass artist Dale Chihuly. One of his pieces hangs from the ceiling of the lobby of the Minneapolis Institute of Art and, when we were in Las Vegas, one of the many over-the-top things we saw at the Bellagio hotel and casino was his huge ceiling in the lobby. The museum was spectacular.
Then we walked down to the Olympic Sculpture Park,
overlooking Elliot Bay. This was
something of a disappointment. There
were a few large, sculptures, on an-odd-shaped piece of lawn laid out on and
around street overpasses.
We walked back to the Monorail station, took it back
downtown, and walked down to the Pike Place Market again, where we got in line
for lunch at Lowells—a large, popular place, filled by a crowd of people. The queue moved faster than expected and we
got a table up on the third floor. I
forget what we ate, but it was good, and very fresh, no doubt from the market
below.
We went back to the hotel, picked up our bags, took the light
rail to the airport, and flew out on the 7:10 flight, arriving at MSP after
midnight.
