Sunday July 9 (Port Orchard) & Monday July 10 (Seattle)

Sunday

It was another pleasant day although there was some cloud around. I took time to download photos from yesterday and update my blog!

We went out for lunch at Applebee's in Gig Harbour, I had half a rack of baby ribs and they were good. Back home and a couple of cousins of Cheryl's visited, she had not seen them for many years so they had a good catch up on family affairs.

Monday

This morning it was rather cloudy as we set off to Bremerton to catch the ferry to Seattle, the sun was trying to make its presence felt, lol! 

As we reached Bremerton Jim pointed out the USS Kitty Hawk and three other naval vessels that are mothballed here. 

There are on going discussions about what is to become of the Kitty Hawk. One idea is to send her to Kitty Hawk (NC), this would be a mammoth undertaking involving at least 4 tugs and going round the south of South America! 

At the opposite end of the spectrum, she could be broken up for the steel, I do hope this does not occur! We were lucky to catch the brand new ferry, it has only been in service a couple of weeks. 

There was very little breeze so the water was lovely and calm for the crossing, it takes about an hour.

I took a photo of the new bridge at Bremerton and the Boat Shed Restaurant, where we ate dinner, is just behind it on the left! 

I stayed outside but had to put my sweatshirt on about half way across, it was rather cool and very overcast. 

As we approached Seattle, having seen it appear from behind Bainbridge Island, we were told there was to be a practice drill for the crew and to ignore the flashing lights etc. 

Well, the drill was for an 'Abandon Ship' event, lol, thank goodness it was not real! Then, as we had been warned, the ferry came to a complete standstill for a few minutes.

 

Finally, we did arrive in Seattle all in one piece! There are some great views to be seen as the ferry approaches Seattle even on a cloudy day!

Off the ferry and we drove towards Pioneer Square, site of our first visit for the day, Underground Seattle. We managed to find a parking garage almost opposite and not too expensive! 

Our timing was excellent as we arrived about 15 minutes ahead of the 1 pm tour. Dean, one of the tour guides, gave us a humorous run down on what to expect as well as some of the early history. 

We gathered downstairs for an introduction and it was a large group from many different places, various US states, Switzerland, London, Sydney Australia and of course New Zealand.

In the late 19th C, three men were responsible for settling Seattle, Arthur Denny, Doc Maynard and Henry Yesler. Denny decided on Elliott Bay as a deep water harbour while Yesler came over to build saw mills and make money.

The first city was built on marshy land and at high tide it became wetter so they put sawdust down, lol, that just made it worse. In Dean's words "it was like oatmeal porridge with raisins in it", I will leave you to figure that out, lol! 

As more buildings, all made of wood, were erected, they needed proper restrooms so they ordered 1,000 of these from the UK, designed by one Thomas Crapper. It took ten years for them to arrive!! By this time, the people were living on top of the cliffs behind the marshy land while the businesses were built on the marshy land below. 

So the crappers were installed and one wooden box pipe was built, it started at the top of the cliffs and ran out to sea. All was fine until high tide, when the water brought all the outfall back in and forced its way up the box pipe. This caused many explosions, like mini geysers, to erupt out of the crappers! Then almost all the businesses were burned down in a great fire. 

This link will give more of the history: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seattle_Underground

The group was then split into three and we were assigned to Dean! We went outside to walk to the first underground area and the toy shop on a corner is the site of Yesler's largest saw mill. The Smith Tower (white) is where the cliffs were back in the day!

We visited four different underground areas so we were walking underneath the current sidewalks. The passages have not been changed from the original, apart from lighting and a few signs to indicate what building had been there. 

One of our stops was underneath the only original purple glass panel left in the sidewalk. It was interesting to realise how this had all come about. On one of the trips outside we saw the oldest bar on Seattle.

When the City Council made their post fire decisions, they decided they needed to tax people. To help them decide how much to tax people they carried out a lot of research on how much various people were earning. 

Dean had explained that at this time the population was about 90% male but yet it was the females seamstresses who were making the most money! So they paid the most taxes, lol! 

(At the end of the tour, in the gift shop, there was a coin for sale, one side read "$5 for a stitch in time" on the other side "$20 for all night alterations", lol!!) when the lady who had been the Head Seamstress passed she left her considerable fortune, $250,000, to the local school district.

We came out of the gift shop and across the street was a Subway next door to a Starbucks so all our needs could be resolved in the one place! We had about 50 minutes until the next hour on our car park finished so we headed over.

After this we headed for Pike Place Market. We drove round for quite a while until we finally found a place to park that was less than $4 for half an hour!!! This was beside the Victor Steinbrueck Park so we wandered over to get the great view across Elliott Bay. There was a very interesting mix of people in the area, many obviously homeless, and including a couple of guys conducting their drug sales!

We wandered through the market and finally reached the fish vendor where fish is thrown from one guy to another. We went down to the lower level, and wandered back towards our starting place. It had become very humid by this time so we went up again out into the fresh air and saw the new market frontage that had been recently opened, it is very much a work in progress. 

We then headed off to find the Fremont Troll, traffic was very heavy at the

Is point and we crawled for some distance. Finally, we found the correct road and what a sight was ahead of us! (Brief history) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fremont_Troll

As we headed back to the ferry dock we realised we were running out of time for the 6.45 pm sailing and the next was at 7.55 pm! We met a few red lights and took a wrong turn which did not help. We reached the dock and all cars had been loaded. Jim drove up to the entrance and asked if it had gone, the ticket lady said it was closed but she contacted them and the response was to send us through, phew!

We then drove to the Boat Shed a lovely restaurant right beside the water, opposite us was another ship, the USS Turner Joy, and this is open to the public. on the way home, Jim stopped so I could take a photo of the Kitty Hawk.