Seattle Friday

After mega-walking on sidewalks yesterday, we were both hesitant to repeat our 20,000+ recorded steps, so soon so took the bus downtown and, in order to take advantage of the reduced fares offered to seniors, we headed to the King County Mass Transit office to get our "Reginal Reduced Fare Permits" that allow us to travel on buses, light rail, and ferries for $1/ride vs $2.50-3.00.  Yes, the cards cost us $3 each but in two rides we had recouped that.

We stopped into two train stations right near by just because we like train stations.  The first was the Kent Street Station currently being used by Amtrak and is the first photo below.

Union Station, just across the street, was the old terminal,  is recently renovated and is now used for special events.  To us this was the nicer of the two stations.  It is easy to imagine a high school prom or even a wedding reception in such a place.

Seattle impresses us with the mix old and new buildings.  One caught our eyes because of the reflections on it in the morning sunshine.  It really begins to visually become part of the sky.

We were very close to the International District (Chinatown in the past) so spent some time walking around.  Typical of all entrances into such districts there was a gate, but beyond that it was hard to get the feeling one gets entering "Chinatowns" in Boston, New York, or San Francisco.  We did walk into on market place that had everything from groceries to a bookstore and frankly, this was more interesting than the rest of the district!

The biggest difference in this market was that it was new and modern so we had the feeling of being in a regular grocery store versus a little crowded market we have found so often to be more typical.  Below are some photos of products in the store.

Quail eggs

Yam noodles

These as just some of the fish tanks where you could select your fresh fish to take home...not something we would typically find in Hannafords.

We pushed onward and along the way had a Starbucks (what else could we have had?). While sipping our beverages, we decided to take a harbor cruise.  We had purchased a City Pass booklet with tickets to a variety of places and one of them was for a cruise.  Down the hill we went and back to the Aquarium pier where we got our tickets and then on to the next pier where we waited with several other hundred people to board.

It was a beautiful day to be out on the water for an hour of cruising around the bay!  We had great views of downtown Seattle, the container terminal, and a parade of older classic wooden boats led by one of the city's fire boats shooting water up into the air.

Seattle skyline

Fireboat leading the parade

Some of the huge cranes used to service the container ships

The Seattle Great Wheel

So after our side excursion we headed back to the Space Needle to get our tickets but found that we had to wait until 5:30 to go up.  That didn't quite leave enough time for the EMP Museum also on the grounds so we sat near the museum and enjoyed doing some people watching.  There was the constant coming and going of the Monorail, plus the playground with an amazing structure for kids to climb. Return to ground level was via one or the other of two big slides.

The playground

The EMP Museum

Our last big event of the day was going up the Space Needle.  

We had amazing views from the top, and took some photos of ourselves as well!

We finished our visit with a beer just to take a little longer in this really neat place.

Then it was dinner time and and we headed to the Annapurna Cafe for our evening meal.  It was highly rated so we ordered some things that would remind us of our many meals in Nepal only to be somewhat disappointed.  The decor was funky, the waiters were attentive, but the food just didn't have the zip we'd experienced in Nepal.

As they say, tomorrow is another day!