After the museum yesterday, I was thinking about taking the train downtown to explore as well. It was then that I was called to fly to Boise, and it's probably for the best. When I reached the airport, it began to snow pretty heavily. There were also lightning strikes in the area -- thundersnow if you will. After our return from Boise, we had to sit ready reserve for five hours. There was, however, one positive to this. Instead of being on call until 9pm, I was released completely around 2pm. I could venture off without staring at my phone.
It took about 45 minutes to get downtown by the train and I spent the rest of the afternoon walking around. I glanced at the fish market, but the entire area around it was saturated with overly touristy shops and things of that nature. I continued by walking toward the Space Needle. It was kind of strange to finally see it up close this late in my life. I've seen the stone heads of Easter Island , the Pyramids of Giza, and the Great Wall of China, but no space needle. I remember always wanting to visit Seattle when I was a kid. I had read about it in a book in second grade or thereabouts and wanted to see the space needle and the Boeing factory (obviously).
It never happened because flights to Seattle from Wisconsin were always absurdly expensive (I recall often finding $500 fares and this was back in the 90s). When I finally got close to it, I found it smaller than I expected. I looked it up later and it is indeed on the short end of quasi-futuristic towers. The CN Tower in Toronto absolutely towers over it. Even the Stratosphere in Las Vegas dwarfs it by a substantial amount. Around the area are a collection of museums. I wanted to take pictures of the tower and buildings at night, but it was only 4:00, so I had some time to kill. There was a Pop Art Museum that looked interesting until I saw the prices. $30! Sorry, that's out of control. The Louvre in Paris is half of that. The nearby science museum was also pretty steep, so I walked to a Thai restaurant to have some panang curry and rice. It was a splendid way to kill some time. It was also good to warm up a bit. While perhaps in the 40s, there was a very strong wind that seemed to chill things down a bit more than that.
After my meal, I embarked on an uphill walk to a place called Kerry Park. I had read that the views from this park were the best for taking pictures of the skyline. It did not disappoint. Again, you will notice there is some weird interlacing because I had to take a picture of the screen since my camera won't import. I sat up there, shivering, as the sun set and day slowly turned to night. As soon as the sun disappeared behind the horizon, it felt like the temperature dropped an instant 15 degrees. I was trying to manipulate my camera with gloves on.
Overall, I think I got some pretty decent pictures for a point-and-shoot camera. Just use your imagination to see them crisp and sharp as if they hadn't been taken with a cellphone of a tiny lcd screen. The viewpoint from Kerry Park was good because it gave a perspective on the Space Needle that made it seem bigger. Since the other buildings of downtown Seattle are further away and somewhat downhill, it gives this illusion that the Space Needle is bigger than it really is. That being said, the actual city of Seattle is smaller than I envisioned. I essentially walked from one end of its downtown to the other and back again. It has a small town kind of feel to it. Maybe this is stemming from the fact that I live in an area of 10+million people and Seattle is 600,000. Outside the downtown area, it has a very "rustic" feel to it. The architecture of the houses to the way people dress makes it seem like Seattle is hoping for a return of the 90s. It's been a while since I've seen people wearing baggy pants. Now to try and get some sleep . . .
