Underground and sky high

 

Thursday 29 May 2025

It was a little cloudy after the sunny day yesterday, but thankfully it stayed dry and after an errand or two we spent some time at the Aquarium on the Waterfront. If I'm honest, it was a bit underwhelming compared to others we've seen - Lisbon and Monterey for example. I had especially looked forward to seeing the sea otters who are soooo cute, but they only had two and they and most of  the animals such as the seals were a bit shy. They didn't have any colourful tropical fish or seahorses (my personal favourite), and although they were very well supplied with sea anemones, sea cucumbers and so on in touching pools with helpful volunteers and guides, it was all a bit shabby and tired.

After a little lunch at Skillet (I had really good tomato bisque soup), we went to the rather lovely. light and airy Seattle Art Museum which has "Seattle's most hardworking man" outside - a 30ft high black steel two-dimensional sculpture which perpetually hammers 364 days a year, taking a break only on Labour Day, and which was a very controversial addition to the gallery a number of years ago, a bit like the 4th plinth at Trafalgar Square. (The Museum's head curator was actually given a raise as a reward for commissioning an artwork that created so much conversation!) 

We went to see Ai Wei Wei's exhibition which was just excellent - I especially admired his Lego pictures, such as The Scream, and his representation of the death of a refugee on a beach, and his very clever joining together of pieces such as the three-legged stools and the bicycles. 

As a bonus, I also got to see some Alexander Calder pieces in a separate exhibition - his kinetic sculptures are just incredible in the way they fly through light and air, always moving. The photos don't do justice to them - they make me feel at peace.

We then had an underground tour around the Pioneer Square area run by Beneath the Streets, where we got to see the basements no longer used when Seattlelites raised the street levels following the rebuilding of the city after the 1889 fire, leaving previous street levels at basement level and creating underground corridors which came in very useful during Prohibition times. The history is interesting, but the tour involves looking at a lot of brick walls and some reinforced ceilings - you have to use your imagination quite a lot. (Memorial to some fire fighters in the sculpture below.)

We then headed around the corner to the beautiful art deco Smith Tower. Completed in 1914, the building was funded by the Smith family whose fortune came from the famous Smith Typewriter brand. There's a cute museum (sorry, pics were all terrible) that's been created to recreate the lives of the people who worked and were involved in the Smith (such as the telephone exchange, and real cheques being entered on the ledgers by the then financial clerk). 

We went up in the beautiful escalator to the top (35th) floor, where we then took photos across the city from on high, before settling in the famous Chinese Room bar (where the wishing chair is supposed to be bringing you your future husband) for a couple of very good cocktails - Lucy's was a tiki, mine was called the Elevatore and contained mezcal which was really quite strong!

We caught a bus further uptown to go for some dinner (I had lasagne with a Japanese curry twist, slightly odd but kind of worked) before heading home. Being out all day on your feet takes its toll when you're as old as me!