The Bluest Sky You've Ever Seen: Seattle

That's Seattle in the photo. You might already know that due to 2 iconic type images in the photo, that being the Space Needle and Mount Rainier.

Where I am right now, Fort Worth, Texas, there are no iconic images that anyone might associate with this town. Regardless of that, my long time reader knows Fort Worth is the envy of cities and towns far and wide. This is a well known fact. Has to be a fact. I read it in the Fort Worth Star-Telegram.

Below is a video, with a hit song from the 60s, by Perry Como, called Seattle. It was the theme song for a TV show called Here Come the Brides, set in the time Seattle was a frontier town in need of women for all the loggers.

Seattle has been my favorite big city for as long as I can remember. More than any of the other big cities I've been to, Seattle is like being in a theme park. So many attractions. Let me describe a typical visit to Seattle and you'll see what I mean. This may be instructive for Fort Worth readers in terms of understanding why Fort Worth tends to underwhelm me. And others.

I park at REI Corporate Headquarters flagship store. Free parking in a parking garage. The REI store is a theme park all by itself. It's got a mountain bike trail where you can test your new bike. An indoor rockclimb, a great view, extremely cool architecture. REI built this late in the last century. If this had been done in Fort Worth, 4 years later Seattle Community College would have bought the building from failing REI.

From REI I walk to the entry to the transit tunnel that runs deep under downtown Seattle. I hop a bus going into the tunnel. Transit downtown is free. I get off at the first station, Westlake. Westlake Station is a cavernous space that connects to several downtown stores, like Nordstroms. Westlake is called Westlake because it is at Westlake Center. Westlake Center is sort of a townsquare. This type thing is why I was confused by Fort Worth's Sundance Square, which is a bunch of parking lots.

Westlake Center is a vertical mall with a very good food court on the top floor. There are at least 3 vertical malls in downtown Seattle. And several large department stores. There are no vertical malls in downtown Fort Worth. And no department stores. Westlake Center is the downtown terminus of the Monorail.

So, let's take the Monorail to Seattle Center. Seattle Center is where the 1962 Seattle World's Fair took place. It's not a long ride. To get to the Seattle Center Monorail station you ride through the Experience Music Project museum. You need to go there if you are a rock and roll fan.

At the Seattle Center there are all sortsa things to do. Key Arena is where the soon to be ex-Sonics play. You can see Key Arena in the photo above at the lower right. You can easily spend a day at Seattle Center. Big events take place here like the Folklife Festival and Bumbershoot. The price to ride to the top of the Space Needle has gone way up over the years. But it's worth it.

Once we're done with the Space Needle let's walk down to the Waterfront. It's not a long walk and it's all downhill. I don't know if it's back in operation yet. It had to close while a new sculpture garden was installed. I'm talking about the Waterfront Trolley. You can ride that. Or just walk the waterfront. There is a lot to see on the Seattle Waterfront. Docked cruise ships, piers with lots of stores and restaurants, the Seattle Aquarium, marinas, lots of boats. Including ferry boats. You can easily go for a short ferry ride, like out to Bainbridge Island, for a fun side trip.

As you're walking along the Seattle Waterfront, when you get to the Aquarium, you'll see the Pike Place Hillclimb. That's a wide series of steps that take you into Pike Place Market. There are restaurants to tempt you on the climb.

Pike Place Market can take hours to explore. It's huge. Multiple levels. Always busy. The Seattle Art Museum is nearby. Unlike Fort Worth, Seattle does not restrict its cultural amenities to one area and call it the Cultural District. Seattle spreads its culture all over town.

From Pike Place let's go back to Westlake Center, it's just a couple blocks away, and go down to the transit tunnel again and hop a bus (or soon a train). There are several transit stations, all huge and all themed to match their location. We'll get off at the last one, that being the International District Station. The International District used to be called Chinatown. But then Seattle got all politically correct.

When you get back to the surface, from the International District Station, you will be directly in front of the Seahawk Stadium, with the Mariner's Ballpark behind it, with a huge Exhibition Hall between them. Seahawk Stadium sits where the Kingdome used to be. Fort Worth can't figure out how to replace its antique Will Rogers Coliseum, used for rodeos, while Seattle somehow manages to blow up a perfectly useful Kingdome and build 2 new ballparks and a new exhibition hall. I love a dynamic go to it and get it done type city. But then there are some merits in being laid back and taking decades to get something done. I hope Fort Worth's Trinity River Vision town lake gets filled with water while I'm still on the planet.

From the International Transit Station there is a pedestrian bridge that takes you across the train tracks. On the other side you can go to the former Chinatown. You don't wanna miss Uwajumaya. It's an Asian grocery store, on steroids, with one of the best food courts I've ever seen.

After Uwajumaya you can go back to the transit tunnel, or get on that trolley I mentioned earlier. In other words you can find a number of ways to make your way back to your car parked at REI. The International District is right next to Pioneer Square. There are galleries, restaurants and nightclubs in Pioneer Square. This is also where Underground Seattle is, which is a tourist thing I've never seen.

On the way back to REI you might want to check out the Washington State Convention Center. It's a rather cool building. It is built over Interstate 5, creating a tunnel for the freeway. If I remember right the convention center opened in the late 1980s or early 90s. Since I've been in Texas they've spent $500 million adding on, with an atrium over 5th Avenue. Fort Worth remodeled its seldom used convention center in the past few years. In three stages. Because they couldn't afford the $138 million price tag in one shot. The Seattle Convention Center has plenty of hotels nearby, they didn't need to give tax breaks and concessions to get a hotel, like Fort Worth did. It's still under construction.

When you go into the Washington State Convention Center you go up a long long escalator. This takes you to a wall of glass that you can walk through and out to what is called Freeway Park. This is also built over the freeway. There are trails and waterfalls and greenery. There were some security problems and one murder, I believe. This was fixed with increased security and having more activities in the park. Fort Worth had a similar park, Heritage Park, that had similar problems. Fort Worth fixed their park's problem by surrounding it with cyclone fence and calling it closed. Right across from the county courthouse and next to a jail. One would think security would not have been a big problem to solve. But it's Fort Worth, little problems are not easy to solve.

Well, there you go, a small sampling of why I like Seattle. There is much more to like than the stuff I've described in the downtown area. Districts, like Fremont, which has seceded from the Union. University District, which is where the UW is located, is a good thing. Lake Union with Gasworks Park, good thing. I'll want to see Lake Union when I'm up there. Much has changed. In Ballard you can watch boats go through the locks to get to Lake Union or away from Lake Union. At the Ballard Locks you can go underwater and watch salmon go through the locks.

And now, Perry Como's ode to Seattle.