‘Tis now Friday evening and I have had quite a day. I left the hotel a bit early this morning because I realized that, of all the things not to bring, I did not bring an umbrella. So I found a 7-11 near my hotel and bought one from a guy who laughed at me for not having one, and said “If it’s not raining here, it’s not normal.” And it was indeed cold and rainy as I went to find the bus stop to go downtown. I was lamenting not bringing any sweaters. I got to Pioneer Square around 10 and bought a ticket for the Underground Tour at 11, then wandered around a bit, went down to the pier and looked at all the fog. Things did not look hopeful for non-rain. I found my way back to the Underground Tour, where a neat-looking older guy started out telling us about Seattle’s very colorful history, most of which was news to me. They had a lot of interaction with sewage here back in the day. Toilets that flushed up and stuff. He ended the intro by saying that the “city was rebuilt in true Seattle spirit, by which I mean the wrong way.” For the actual tour I ended up in the group of a very funny Irish woman named Elsa, who made us have a moment of silence for all the whiskey that burned up in the fire. The tour was awesome, though I have a hard time believing that the Underground portions are not slightly embellished for tourism. They really are the old streets of the city though, underneath the current city. Just like in Futurama! No mutants though. Not that I saw, anyway. Elsa told a story about this prostitute who required that all of her girls have a high school diploma, be well versed in history and math, and speak at least two foreign languages. After whoring for a while she used her earnings to become an investment banker and when she died in the early 1900’s she left $250,000 to Seattle public schools. This is a weird city.
After the tour I went to the Pioneer Square Antique Mall. It was huge and contained many things that I wanted to buy, including lots of old rotary phones. Also, real snuff bottles! I love snuff bottles, and they are usually by far my favorite part of big art museums. When I was a kid and I saw them I would always stare at them forever and pick out the one I would buy if I could. Too bad I don’t have $400 lying around or that dream could have come true today. I walked over to Elliott Bay Bookstore and poked around a bit, and checked out the café which is supposedly what the café on Frasier was modeled after but it didn’t look that similar to me. By this time the sun had come out, miraculously, and the sky was almost free of clouds. I have no idea how this happened so fast, but it was great. It got nice and warm as well. So I walked over to the International District and went to a Dim Sum place that my guidebook recommended called Four Seas. They brought three carts over immediately and that was it. This was both good and bad. Good because it’s nice not to be interrupted while eating. Bad because I was starving when I first came in so I ended up with, I believe, 19 pieces of dim sum on my table. I think I ate 13 of them, and almost died. It was delicious though. I had fried dumplings, fried wontons, steamed rice balls with roast pork, shrimp dumplings, beef shumai, and these amazing taro cakes that melted in my mouth. I rolled myself out of the restaurant and figured I’d better walk to Pike Place Market, so I did. |
