Finally on Friday

 Friday 30 May 2025

We were lucky to have yet another dry and sunny day in Seattle, having been warned that we'd probably need cagoules on standby to cope with the frequent drizzle.

The guide book had suggested that Capitol Hill was a hip and happening high street, so we caught the bus from outside the apartment (so very handy) and took a walk up and then back down Broadway - it didn't really live up to the hype, unless we were looking in the wrong places. We had good coffee and croissants at a popular bakery called The French Guys, took a stroll through the Cal Anderson park, found the Jimi Hendrix statue (which we thought would have been better placed in the park rather than on the side of the street) and had a browse in the enormous Elliott Bay bookshop.

At lunchtime Lucy popped back to the apartment and I went to the Olympic Sculpture Park which is near the waterfront. I had a sandwich (a kind of avocado dog, which was tasty though as always dripping with too much dressing) and took in the view. The park is quite small and there's only a handful of sculptures, but it's a lovely location.

I walked to the Chihuly Garden to meet Lucy - it's right beside the famous Space Needle (see the opener to any episode of Frasier...)

We had booked a CityPass that got us into the Aquarium, the Chihuly and the Space Needle at a discount, though it was still $102 each. The Chihuly glass however, was worth that alone - one of my holiday highlights. My camera battery failed so I took these photos on my phone - the sculptures are placed inside and out, and it was good to watch some videos showing Dale Chihuly (now 84 and still active, and a bit of a local hero as he's from Tacoma just down the road from Seattle) at work with his team in Jerusalem, Venice and Finland. Having lost his sight in one eye and injuring his shoulder many years ago, he designs his pieces and supervises their production, but only does a minimal amount of the blowing himself. The advantage of this is clear in terms of the eclectic creativity of the pieces; the shapes, colours and scale of them is just incredible.

We had a glass of wine in the bar there before going up 47 floors to the observation deck in the Space Needle lift. Of course in its time (1962) it would have blown everyone's minds, though it seems quite ordinary by today's standards as buildings have got higher and higher! Still spectacular views though, but an eye-wateringly expensive experience if you choose to sit and enjoy the vista with a drink and some food on the revolving area though - $35 each before you even buy anything - and for some obscure reason the static Loupe lounge there closes during the summer months.

Our dinner was rather less pricey - we decided to try a place called Some Random Bar which was en route back to the apartment. It was a noisy Friday night kind of place but I had a refreshing Paloma, some very good seared tuna and a nice glass of wine (good Washington State wines here, big variations in price) before we headed back to pack for the final leg the next day, back on the Amtrak Cascades train (it goes all the way overnight to LA) to Portland, Oregon (not to be confused with Portland, Maine, which apparently was named first!)