Sleepless in Seattle

I took at vacation a few weeks ago with my friend Mason (Buzzed Kitty). We are both Architecture Interns in Little Rock and we graduated college together. Mason suggested taking a trip up to the northwest, in particular Seattle and Portland, we then threw in Vancouver, B.C. because it is so close, its another country, and we heard it was pretty cool. So we booked our trip for early July so that we could catch the Independence Day fireworks in Seattle (we assumed they'd be better there than Portland). We went for 11 days, 4 in Seattle, 4 in Vancouver, 3 in Portland. It wasn't really that expensive a trip: Hotels, Flights, AmTrak between the cities was all just under $1000, thats dang good for 11 days.



We arrive in Seattle sometime mid-day and go to our hotel, check-in and leave our bags and head out exploring. After we find a place to eat the first place we went to was Pike Place Market, home to the thrown fish where someone orders a fresh fish and the market guys grab it, yell out the fish name and how many and toss it to a guy waiting behind the counter about 15 feet away with newspaper. A very cool and funny site.
After this we head out for more exploring and we find our way to one of my must see's, the Seattle Public Library (above) designed by Rem Koolhas' Office of Metropolitan Architecture in the Netherlands. This is an amazingly fun and active library. If America wants to get more young people interested in Literature, this is the tool needed to do it, amazing.
We explored some more then called up some college friends of ours who moved up to Seattle, also Architecture Interns. We had a few (many) drinks with Gary and Lauren and they offered to take us around the next evening and show us som more of the city most tourists would not know about.




The next day we woke up to drizzle and for some reason went to the Space Needle (should have waited til the afternoon when it started clearing up). But thats alright, it was still pretty cool being up there. That afternoon though we did come back to the Seattle Center and went into the Experience Music Project and Science Fiction Museum designed by Frank Gehry of Gehry Partners. This was my first must see and it was not a let down. The history of music in Seattle was pretty amazing. I had no idea so many great musicians either came from or got their start in the Seattle area. That night Gary and Lauren took us to a beach north of town called Golden Gardens Park and then up to a well recognized view from Kerry Park known as "the Frasier View"




The next day would be Independence Day. We headed up to Fremont area to see a couple of things such as the Fremont Troll and the Fremont Rocket on our way to meet up with our friends again and get to Gasworks Park in time to see the 4th of July fireworks display on Lake Union. Gasworks Park was amazing and the amount of people was just incredible and the people were all pretty cool. It was basically like a carnival set up there with fair food and blowup play areas for kids. They even had a blowup entry to the Beer Garden, if thats not inviting I just don't know what is. We got a table in the beer garden and proceded to drink heavily until they stopped the beer from flowing when the fireworks started (apparently you cannot drink and watch fireworks at the same time, but we did, shhhh). After the fireworks were over we headed out to some bar in Fremont with some new friends Mason met. The rest of the night is kind of a blur, I remember texting my friend in Orlando that I was drunk on a roof of a house at 3 am?? I did make it off the roof safely.




The next day was our last in Seattle so we headed up to Broadway street and walked around, saw the Jimi Hendrix statue then headed back to town to meet up with Gary. We wanted to take a Ferry ride to one of the islands. Gary offered to go with us because he works on Bainbridge Island and takes a ferry everyday to work. It was pretty neat and a fairly cheap ride as well and it had great views of the Seattle skyline and a sunset also.



All in all it was a very fun trip. Seattle was all I expected and more, we could have spent another few days there and not been bored. Maybe it was because we had friends there (thanks again Gary and Lauren, you guys made that trip so much more awesome) or maybe its because I've wanted to go there for a good portion of my life. Who knows, whatever it was, I definately recommend anyone going to Seattle. Two things though: First, the weather isn't all that bad. Mornings were drissly but the afternoons were perfect. Second, I now know where "Sleepless in Seattle" camer from, in the summer, the sun rises at like 4:30 am and sets around 10:30 pm. Pretty tough getting used to, but it was cool at the same time.

Well, I finally got my Seattle photo's on flickr. When I get Vancouver and Portland done, I'll write about those destinations as well. Hope you enjoyed.

Troeger