The beautiful weather we had yesterday disappeared under a layer of clouds today and the whole uncertainty about where were were going to spend the night seemed to give a kind of emotional grayness to the day as well. Fortunately, both the actual clouds and the metaphorical clouds parted by the afternoon and we ended the day quite happily.
We had breakfast and packed up our stuff at the University Inn. We headed downtown where I had arranged a walking tour of Seattle. Our guide was Jae, the man carrying the sign under his arm. He had been recently laid off from a software business, and he decided to start doing walking tours while he was looking for another job. We liked him: he was personable and knew a lot about the history of the city. Plus, since he had only started recently, our group was much smaller than the usual established commercial tours. He was quite happy to have the dogs come along with us, and I am happy to say that they were perfectly behaved.
We saw all the usual downtown sights including Pike’s Place Market.
We did see a couple of more unusual sights, too. A performance artist dressed in nineteenth century clothes is reading aloud the whole of War and Peace. However, she only reads it when she has someone who will walk next to her. Otherwise she simply paces back and forth accompanied by a harpist. She’s been at this for months, and she may be there a year before she finishes the book.
We had a takeout lunch from Paseo Caribbean in Fremont. This is the favorite restaurant in Seattle in TripAdvisor and I think it gets the top rating from Yelp! I suspect part of the charm is that it is pretty cheap, but the Cuban-style food was quite good. We took the dogs to the beach at Warren Magnuson Park. This dog park was a bit disappointing after reading all the hype about how it is one of the finest in the nation. The stretch of “beach” – rocky shore, really – on Lake Washington is tiny and much of the rest of it is just a field of wood chips. We did not stay that long. Unfortunately, with road construction and the awful Seattle traffic, it took us a long time to get there and back even though it was only a few miles.
By afternoon, we had been contacted by the Maxwell Hotel, the place which turned us away yesterday, and the offered us a room for the night. We had to pay, of course, but they offered us their best room for the price of a standard one. We readily agreed to this, and in late afternoon, just as the sun was finally breaking through the clouds, we checked in.
We did not stay in our room that long, however, because the Bite of Seattle was taking place in the Seattle Center across the street from us. The Seattle Center is the site of the 1962 World’s Fair, and it is home to the iconic Space Needle. This free event had lots of restaurants hawking small samples of their menus and bands playing on a couple of stages. It was not the best example of this kind of “Taste of…” event that I have ever seen, and it was tiny compared the the one in Chicago. But it was pleasant enough to sit on the grass and eat even if the bands were barely up to doing covers of 80’s songs.
We had already bought tickets to the Seattle Children’s Theatre for the evening. This is also located in the Seattle Center. On our way to the theater we found this enterprising child juggling with a hat out for donations.
The Seattle Children’s Theatre is one of only a couple professional companies which do work for young people. We were a bit disappointed when we discovered that during the summer the focus changes from performing for children to having children perform, and so the two plays were basically summer program productions. As such, they were pretty good. Both plays were adaptations of Roald Dahl stories: The B.F.G. and The Witches. I have never understood why anybody liked The B.F.G. though I know people who claim that this is their favorite Dahl story. I love The Witches, and I think they did a credible job of trying to translate this very untheatrical story to the theater.
We wandered back to the hotel, sprung the dogs, and walked back through the park as the sun went down. There was a skate park there and we had a good time watching some of the kids do their moves.
Tomorrow, on to Vancouver.
