Trip to Seattle & Alaska – photo dump – day 2 (touring Seattle)

Hey all. Here are the photos from day two of our trip. We were in Seattle for Independence Day and our hotel was only two or three blocks away from Seattle Center and The Space Needle. We got up that morning by, had breakfast at the hotel, chatted with some people and went out adventuring.

Some of the things were closed because it was Independence Day like the Museum of Modern Pop (MoPop), but we made the most of it.

We looked around a bit then we jumped on the monorail and headed to Pike’s Place Market and the Seattle Waterfront.

The air coming off the Olympic mountain range was so clean smelling it was unbelievable. It was like we were breathing for the first time ever.

We found our way over to Pioneer Square where Seattle was first founded and we took a tour of the Underground city. That was one of my favorite things that we did that day.

The city was founded and built on tidal flats that would flood when the tide came in. It also caused issues with pressure in the sewage system that resulted in exploding toilets. The city burnt down at some point and the founders decided to build the street level up 30 feet to solve the sewage and flooding problems. The first floors of buildings were now underneath what would become the new street level.

The underground was closed for a time due to concerns with the bubonic plague, but they were declared a historic landmark and reopened to tour groups. Skylights were placed into the sidewalks on the street level. Walking over them you’d never know what they really are until you’re underneath them seeing the light pour in from the city street. level.

We learned a lot on the tour and had a good time some of the areas are in rough shape and it was a little creepy being down there in the musty underground of Seattle. One thing we learned was that nobody died in the fire that burnt Seattle to the ground however, 38 people died falling off of the Street level into the underground sections before construction was complete. The city didn’t care much for public safety at that time and they’d only put out wooden ladders for people to climb up to the street level across the street and then had to climb down a wooden ladder back into the sidewalk underground area.

Another thing that we learned was that a woman was more affluent in the creation of Seattle than any man ever was. She had an army of “seamstresses“ that paid taxes on all of the “sewing“ they did. This money helped Seattle more than anything any man ever did to help Seattle. The woman was a pioneer in her field.

After the underground tour, we retraced our steps back to the hotel, stopping for an early supper at a place called the crab pot that had Alaskan King crab. It was delicious.

We toured a little museum/oddity shop on the way back. There were shrunken heads and stuffed animals and mummies and all kinds of really interesting things there.

We went back to the hotel after that and slept off our food. We planned on going out to see fireworks, but because of the time change and the travel day before, and then the travel to the ship the following day, we took it easy in the hotel room, the rest of the night.

Here are the pictures from that day.