I arrived in Seattle on Tuesday afternoon. My AirBnB was located in Capitol Hill, which turned out to be a fantastic location. It was just a few minutes drive from downtown and half a mile from local blues dancing.
I really only spent about a day exploring Seattle. I walked around the Seattle Center, the grounds for the 1962 World’s Fair, that today houses the Space Needle, the Science Museum, Key Arena, the EMP Sci-fi/pop culture museum, and lots of theaters and galleries and such.
After walking around the Seattle Center, I did a duck tour:
Duck tours are those amphibious vehicles you find in waterfront cities, full of tourists honking on duck whistles shaped like duck bills. They’re very silly. But, they’re a great way see what there is to see in a new town and learn things you might not have known otherwise. For example, did you know that Seattle’s waterfront area was raised up back in the late 1800s/early 1900s by some 30 feet or so? Apparently, old Seattle still sits underneath the streets of today and you can take walking tours down there. This I did not know, and now I have something to do next time I go back.
Hands down, the coolest thing I saw in Seattle was the International Fountain:
It’s this huge crater with a giant metallic half-sphere in the middle that spouts out water several stories high. There are speakers all around the outside of the crater that play old rock ballads (and other music?) and the fountain’s dance is coordinated to that music. And it’s free. Anyone can come during the summertime and enjoy playing in the fountain or just watching the show. I think this is a fantastic service provided by the city.
The next day, I took the ferry to Victoria, Canada for a day trip. I was hoping to glimpse some marine wildlife on the ~3-hour ride, but no luck. Victoria is a lovely town, very picturesque, and you can tell there’s a lot of money there. I did one of those hop-on/hop-off open-air bus tours to see the city, and the guide said Victoria is known for it’s gardens and as a destination for honeymooners and retirees, or “garden beds, newly weds, and nearly deads,” as the joke went. One of the reasons it’s such a popular destination is because it has the mildest weather in all of Canada – it rarely gets below freezing there.
I got some noodles in Chinatown and walked around the inner harbor and Empress Hotel before heading over to Beacon Hill Park.
Victoria’s Beacon Hill Park is a large, beautiful park with lots of walking paths, ponds, birds, and a variety of plant life. I really enjoyed walking around there. They also have a petting zoo in the park, which I was drawn to because of the peacocks:
They had at least a dozen male peacocks and a few females, as well, and they were so colorful and beautiful. They must be a different species of peacocks than what you find in US zoos. They were everywhere, and every once in a while one of them would start with this screeching caw and the others would respond and the whole place would be filled with the sound of a dozen peacocks screaming at each other from all over the complex.
It started raining at that point, and it was getting on the in the afternoon, so I hopped on the next bus that came along and let it wind me through Victoria once more before I went back to the ferry terminal. On the ride home, clouds hung low in the sky over the water, with flat bottoms as if they were sitting on a clear surface, like a drop ceiling that you could reach up and touch if you just stretched a little further.
What I liked best about both Victoria and Seattle were the parks, especially the variety of plant life. There are so many different kinds of fir trees! Tall and short, fat and skinny, thick and sparse, in every combination. Some were huge, tall, with crooked branches like arthritic limbs. Others had spindly branches that just drooped down limply under the weight of the thick, copious needles. Others looked like big bushes, with needles so thick and tight together you couldn’t see the trunk or any of the branches. Other had branches that sagged down in the middle but turned upward at the ends in a U shape, as if held up by marionette strings. It was beautiful and fascinating.
I’m back in Portland now, looking forward to seeing more of this lovely city. I’m also in last-minute prep mode as I prepare my car for sale and purge whatever I can before I fly out of here in just 4 short days.
TL;DR: Went to Seattle, Victoria. Had fun.
Sounds beautiful! Esp. your description of the low hanging clouds when you were on the ferry! I want to go to Victoria someday! And Seattle of course!