Seattle

We began our day by taking an underground tour of the Pioneer Square location of Seattle.  This subterranean tour begins in a restored 1890's saloon and took us below the storefronts and sidewalks of the city.  It was very interesting and certainly a bit unusual as we learned the history of how this city was developed.  After the tour, we took in Pike Place Market.  This is many times bigger and nicer than the West Side Market of Cleveland and more on the scale of Faneuil Hall in Boston.  There were lots of people and all of the vendors were quite busy.  The market includes numerous restaurants, shops, fruit, produce and flower vendors.  This is where the Pike Place Fish Market is located.  When a customer orders a fish, a market worker will select the fish and then throw the fish being ordered to another worker who weighs it and completes the sale.  It is quite a show. 
We decided to have lunch at Lowell's restaurant which offers views of the waterfront including Elliott Bay and Puget Sound.  The food was great and the views wonderful.  After lunch, we visited the original Starbucks restaurant.  This is where it all began.  The line for coffee was out the door.  Next was a trip to the Space Needle.  We walked to the monorail station stopping along the way at several stores.  Fortunately, the line and wait was short.  The ride to the top took only 40 seconds and the view was spectacular.  We were able to see the entire city and the surrounding waters along with the Cascade Mountain range including Mount Rainier and Mount St. Helen's.  We were told that there are only about 40 days out of the year that you can see Mount St. Helen's.  We felt quite fortunate to have visited Mount St. Helen's yesterday and then be able to see it again today all the way from Seattle.

The weather the past week here is Seattle was quite rainy.  We were very lucky to have a clear and sunny day today to tour the city and have such great views from the Space Needle.

We leave in the morning for Glacier National Park.

Pictures can be seen at:  https://picasaweb.google.com/tschick62/201163Seattle?authkey=Gv1sRgCM2foKzxz86HjQE&feat=directlink

More later . . .