Part of a series from the travelog of my trip to Seattle in October 2022.
Up early. Heavy rains, gray windows. Creaking & popping of floor registers. Surprisingly, 8 hours of sleep. This time zone is weird. Granola and shower.
Having breakfast and coffee at Argento Cafe on 12th. It’s passable — espresso drinks, and (microwaved) eggs on bagels. Tasty, but tiny coffeeshop fare. Seattle’s full of these little places.
Joe and I are going to the Museum of Pop Culture today, hopefully by monorail. Hopefully we’ll be in the Space Needle by sunset. I need to drop Willie’s marble at the base somewhere. Tee-hee. Hopefully Joe feels OK after his COVID and Flu shot yesterday. Says he’s moving slow. Today may be interesting.
Also, the rain stopped. Overcast with pops of sunlight.
It can’t rain all the time.
Milled about until Joe met me at 12th and John, then we went downtown to take a tour around. Walked through Pike Place Fish Market and saw the original Starbuck’s Coffee. Neat.
Then we continued on to the #1 line to take the shortest monorail in the world to MoPop and the Space Needle.
MoPop is actually kinda cool. Collections in the Horror, Sci-Fi, Fantasy sections, then Nirvana, Pearl Jam, Jimi Hendrix, guitars, rap photography. Good place to spend some time. Chris Cornell statue out front. Kinda looks like him. Building façade designed by Frank Gerry. Monorail runs right through it. Tickets $32 each.
Next door across the plaza to the Space Needle. Jehovah’s Witnesses stalking the plaza. Needle reopened after remodels. Restaurant level still rotates, but floor is part glass, and no restaurant, replaced with a smaller reservation-only cocktail bar. Still spins.
Observation deck metal meshes are replaced with glass — 4 inches thick, leans out, crystal clear; glass benches. Amazing what we’re doing with such a fragile material.
The clouds parted for a short bit and we got to see Mount Rainier to the south — majestic. Saw some of the Olympic mountains across the Sound too. Sunset occluded by ocean-effect clouds. Still gorgeous.
I forgot to place Willie’s marble at the base. So, so very tired. Feet hurt. We bused back to Joe’s house to decide next moves. His friends were throwing a Halloween get-together. I opted out. Out of spoons, especially after two tours and a day out.
Went home, dazed, then passed out. You run me ragged, Seattle.