The Old City

The sunset, viewed from Matt's apartment
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I got to Seattle just in time to see a glorious sunset from Matts balcony.

Seattle is a great city! I spent a day here during a midshipman cruise a few years ago, and covered all the major tourist attractions (i.e. the Space Needle). So this time, Matt showed me his favorite parts of the city.

Seattle history

We started by walking through the Pike Place Market, although our real goal was to find the Thai restaurant buried in all the twists and turns of the market. The market was really vibrant, with stalls selling all kinds of foods, fish and flowers.

This is the Meeting Rooms floor at the Seattle Public Library. The entire floor is red, with the exception of the bathrooms, which are monochrome in a disturbing, pool water blue color. The library is really an experience.
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After lunch, we walked up (and I mean up several very, very steep hills) to check out the new Seattle library, which is really crazy. Its a very modern building, made of steel and glass, designed by Rem Koolhaas. My favorite part was the Meeting Room level, which is all red and pretty trippy.

From the library we went down to the Smith Tower, which was the tallest skyscraper west of the Mississippi for 50 years, from 1914 to 1964. We rode an old-fashioned, manually operated elevator to the Observation Deck to get views of Seattle.

The view to the North from the Smith Building
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Next we headed off to Pioneer Square, which is the original city. Now its a lot of galleries and stores, which makes it fun to walk around.

We took the monorail from a shopping area to the Seattle Center, where the Space Needle is. It was built for the Worlds Fair in the 60s, and only covers one mile in distance.