Our Final Vancouver Night, the Border & Show Me Seattle

Our last night stop in Vancouver was exceptional and since it was by a marina we felt right at home

This sign on the menu made us laugh for sure

They really have the border well landscaped and the lawns manicured

Artusi in Capital Hill where our Bed and Breakfast was

You can see the chef working hard in the background

Best Salad that I have Ever Had!!!

Leila from DC, our Show Me Seattle guide is the source of today's information with a bit of help from Google...

Our trip is going from North to South

Fisherman’s Terminal in Salmon Bay is freshwater. The entire Pacific Coast fishing commercial fleet is here. Many fisherman live here when they aren’t working.  Beautiful and very poignant memorial; especially since they have fresh names added. Incredible marina!!! Scandinavian area is located by the marina. The marina even has covered wet and dry docks. 

Seaman and women's memorial

Love the detail reliefs on this monument

For some newer lost seaman...sad...

Leila was our driver escorting us as a smaller group in this van

Brought back memories of going through these on Moondance with Lily at our feet

Loved this public art by the locks

Ballad Locks designed by Hiram Chittenden. Including a fish ladder which seals and sea lions have discovered making it an even harder journey for the salmon

Only the one side of this bridge lifts, we went through a few of this type too

Random facts:

Cinerama has been restored thanks to Paul Allen, Bill Gates partner...It was one of those old 3 D movie theaters...

Belltown area is by the Queen Anne Neighborhood. We stayed in Capital Hill which turned out to be a really cool area as well. Since there aren't many farms or ranches close by grain is brought in by ship to this city. All large commercial developers must contribute 1% to beautifying the city, so lots of cool artwork, sculptures, foot bridges, walkways and so forth 

Queen Anne neighborhood lower & upper down by the water that looks out to Elliott Bay. This area is named for the architecture that survived the 1889 fire. Some were built after the fire. All the houses go for millions. A number of the Queen Anne’s are split into condos. Also Craftsman style prevail here as well. Charming area with beautiful gardens. When they get snow, it shuts down Queen Anne area because there are so few snowplows and so many steep hills. Big arts area around here and sports. Seattle Center & Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. The later has contributed so much to the city including the beautiful downtown library. 

                                                                  The library

The Library at Night

Lots of festivals, any excuse will do. 

The Space Needle with MoPoP that funky looking building to the lower left of it

You can just barely see Mt Rainer peeking through the clouds to the right

With Mike's long distance lens here is Mt Rainer

One of the houses that some of the Doctors used on Grey's Anatomy...they shot a number of these homes

Where Yesler's Lumber Mill was

Yesler's mansion was located here before it was torn down

                               Pioneer Square area reminded me of Georgetown or Alexandra, VA


                                Lots of Romanesque style architecture and old converted warehouses

The Train Station Tower

Century Link Field is down by the station

King's Train Station designed by the same architect as Grand Central. 

MoPop was designed by Frank Gehry. Paul Allen helped get this building built for some of his music idols. University of Washington, Seattle University, and many more colleges are located here along with tech schools just to learn coding.


              The purple glass indicates a skylight for the shops below in Pioneer Square

International area is Chinatown, Japantown and Little Saigon. 

.”The Seattle Chinatown-International District Public Development Authority formed in 1975 to fund housing, services, and neighborhood improvements. 

All restaurants have safety, health ratings posted outside. Little Japantown is smaller than Chinatown thanks to WWII roundup and the highway running through the neighborhood. 

 With all the rain the Mariner's stadium as a retractable roof.

Hodge Podge Community Garden still exists to serve this community. Most farmers are Japanese and Italians around here and can be found at Pike St Market. Panama Hotel has a Japanese bathhouse still which is different than Chinese and Korean. When the Japanese left many stored their stuff there. The current owner has turned the tearoom into a museum. On the Corner of Bitter and Sweet is the book about this period. 

The garden is in the foreground with Mariner's Stadium behind

Beacon Hill with Art Nouveau structure started out as a Naval Hospital; now it’s a VA Hospital, but it was the original Amazon headquarters in between. Starbucks Headquarters is here in another part of the city now.

Danny Woo International Park, Danny developed this area into this park for the Japanese. He was Chinese, but did this for this Japantown neighborhood; rather than see their area go toward more developments. 

Hing Hay Park on S King Street was dedicated that year as a sort of International District village green. Its elaborate pagoda was built in Taipei, Taiwan”

                        This pagoda was built in Taiwan and then reassembled here in this garden

Seattle is an isthmus built on hills and marshes. Mt Rainer erupted and created a mudslide that helped create Elliott Bay. It has very little bedrock only where the skyscrapers are. (Pedestrians have right of way here) Army Corp of Engineers built channel to connect Elliott Bay to Lake. So many brewpubs and coffee shops along with having a Starbucks on every corner. West Seattle has Sculpture Garden with lots going on. Celebrating Hempfest Festival down by the Sculpture Gardens this weekend. Seattle Aquarium is more about rescue and education. Miners Landing where the Seattle Wheel is and where you left from to go to the Klondike. 

Amazon Campus covers many city blocks, this part is just one section

Amazon Campus blends into the city, The native Amazonian wears backpacks and blue badges. About 50,000 here. Boeing was the first big industry here. Housing shortage right now which is causing the homeless problem even for people working. They have $15 minimum wage but it still doesn't address the cost of living here.

                                         Amazon's Break room for their Employees

Pike Place Market  1907 was developed because of price gouging that occurred with the Klondike Gold rush. There was a world wide depression at this time. Journalist advertised Seattle, as the best way to get to the Yukon Territory and it helped the city expand. With the middle man jacking up prices of produce and other food, the women revolted and their husbands in city hall had this market built for competition. 

All local shops with the exception of Beecher Cheese, la Panier and Sur la Table all started here so they could stay. Victor Steinbruck, architect decides to save the market back in the 1970's when it had become pretty seedy. He gets everyone to help turn it around and it worked!

The Start of Pike St Market

Yep, they sold artwork, flowers, produce, meats and of course seafood

                                                      These crab were ginormous

                            One of the many tiny restaurants tucked in here and there

                                             I'm glad Monkfish tastes better than it looks

                                             Loved this mural down by the Market

                                                                   What a bargain???

              Hitching Post Alley was a cute area down by the market with boutiques and more cafes.

                                   Inside it gets crowded with tourists and locals alike

                                                     Miner's Landing and the Wheel

                    A ferry coming in...with all the outer islands, there are lots of ferries

                               Here's two ferries getting ready to pass each other

    Victor Steinbreck Park by the Market reminds me of a modern day "Luncheon on the Grass"

                          The Smith Corona original tallest Seattle skyscraper until it wasn't

The forty-two story L.C. Smith building was completed in 1914. For more than four decades it was the tallest building in the American west and a symbol of Seattle's booster spirit and metropolitan aspirations. Smith Corona built this building with an observation deck there and there is another one on the current tallest building next door, the Columbia Center. 

                                                      More public art down by MoPOP

Waterfront and Olde Town is built on landfill. Lots of Romanesque architecture with quaint shops, restaurants, casino and Century Link Field where the Seahawks play.

Denny party landed here and decided to build on the flat beach like area; not a good plan since tides weren't unknown here. Henry Yesler started the first sawmill in this area.  He becomes mayor 3 times despite being a really known crook. The streets back then were rivers of poop, sawdust, and water.  It’s a mess eventually everything in 66 city blocks are wiped out in a fire. They rebuilt with brick or stone on top of hills that have been chopped down to build the city higher. Sea level areas are now terraced. The streets are 10-20 ft higher than sea level in areas; but up in the hills, it was even higher. There are retaining walls everywhere, but they are built to be permeable. They call this area a Liquid faction zone; so the curbs go up and down all around 1st Ave. You definitely have to be careful where you walk.

We didn't make it to see this other part of the Klondike Gold Rush National Park around Pioneer Square

Here's more of what I learned about Seattle if you are interested:  https://www.seattle.gov/cityarchives/seattle-facts/brief-history-of-seattle

Seattle lies on a narrow strip of land between the salt waters of Puget Sound and the fresh waters of Lake Washington. Beyond the waters lie two rugged mountain ranges, the Olympics to the west and the Cascades to the east. It is a city built on hills and around water, in a mild marine climate that encourages prolific vegetation and abundant natural resources.

White settlers came to the Seattle area in 1851, establishing a townsite they first called New York, and then, adding a word from the Chinook jargon meaning "by-and-by," New York-Alki. They soon moved a short distance across Elliott Bay to what is now the historic Pioneer Square district, where a protected deep-water harbor was available. This village was soon named Seattle, honoring a Duwamish Indian leader named Sealth who had befriended the settlers.

The new town's principal economic support was Henry Yesler's lumber mill at the foot of Mill Street (now Yesler Way), built in 1853. Much of the mill's production went to the booming city of San Francisco, but the mill also supplied the fledgling towns throughout the Puget Sound region. A brief Indian "war" in the winter of 1856 interrupted the town's development, but when the Territorial legislature incorporated Seattle in 1869, there were more than 2,000 residents.

The 1870s were fairly quiet, despite the discovery of coal near Lake Washington, and the consequent growth of another extractive industry whose product also found its way to San Francisco. In the early 1870s the Northern Pacific Railway Company announced that its transcontinental railroad western terminus would be at Tacoma, some forty miles south of Seattle. Despite local leaders' disappointment, Seattle managed to force a connection with Northern Pacific shortly after its completion in 1883, and the town's population soared in the late 1880s. Lumber and coal were the primary industries, but the growth of fishing, wholesale trade, shipbuilding, and shipping also contributed to the town's economic expansion and population growth. One estimate is that in the first half of 1889, Seattle was gaining 1,000 new residents per month; in March alone, there were 500 buildings under construction, most of them built of wood. The explosive growth was slowed but not stopped by a devastating fire on June 6, 1889, which leveled the buildings on 116 acres in the heart of the city's business district. No one died in the fire, but the property damage ran into millions of dollars.

Enthusiasm for Seattle was little dampened by the fire. In fact, it provided the opportunity for extensive municipal improvements, including widened and regraded streets, a professional fire department, reconstructed wharves, and municipal water works. New construction in the burned district was required to be of brick or steel, and it was by choice on a grander and more imposing scale.

The 1890s were not so prosperous, despite the arrival of another transcontinental railroad, the Great Northern, in 1893. A nationwide business depression did not spare Seattle, but the 1897 discovery of gold along and near the Klondike River in Canada's Yukon Territory and in Alaska once again made Seattle an instant boom town. The city exploited its nearness to the Klondike and its already established shipping lines to become the premier outfitting point for prospectors. The link became so strong that Alaska was long considered to be the personal property of Seattle and Seattleites.

During the early 1900s, Seattle, now having discovered the rewards of advertising, continued to experience strong growth. Two more transcontinental railroads, the Union Pacific and Milwaukee Road systems, reached Seattle and reinforced the city's position as a trade and shipping center, particularly with Asia and the North Pacific.

The city's population became increasingly diversified. Scandinavians came to work in fishing and lumbering, African Americans to work as railroad porters and waiters, and Japanese to operate truck gardens and hotels. There were significant communities of Italians, Chinese, Jews, and Filipinos. The International District, home to several Asian ethnic groups, was largely developed during this period.

With its population now approaching 240,000, Seattle announced its achievements by sponsoring an international fair in 1909. The Alaska-Yukon-Pacific Exposition celebrated the economic and cultural links Seattle had forged along what is now known as the North Pacific Rim. 

Definitely, another city that you need a week to even begin to see it's wonders...we'll be back!