Day 5 - Seattle in a Day

Now that our treks to the various National Parks were over, we were spending the day in Seattle. Slept in a bit longer, had breakfast at the hotel and headed off to find some good shopping! We had checked out the web for some of the best area shopping centers. We were only a couple miles from the Alderwood Mall so we started there. It was an "ok" mall. Nothing great. Sears, Penney's, Nordstroms as the anchor stores. Seemed as though the stores were more of a "B" grade though. Selection was smaller. We looked around a bit there and then headed to Bellevue Square. Now THAT is a mall! Nordstrom's, Penney's also but much larger selection. Bought some shoes for an upcoming wedding and ended up at Ruth's Chris for lunch. I had never been to a Ruth's Chris that was open for lunch. Smaller menu but same excellent food. Hit the Godiva store for dessert! Loved this mall!

After lunch we headed into Downtown Seattle to go to Pike's Place Market. What an interesting place. Lots of vendors selling lots of different things. Kind of like a flea market on steroids! It is a working Farmer's market and there is lots and lots of fresh produce to be had. Vendors are handing out samples of their produce and the colors and aromas are amazing. Speaking of aroma's they also have the most beautiful fresh flower arrangements I have ever seen and at a very reasonable price. Bouquets started at $5.00 for a smaller bouquet and went up to $15.00 for a very large bouquet. Absoultuetly gorgeous flowers! Then of course there is the main event...the fresh fish vendors. You have to stop and see the show when someone buys a salmon, the place goes crazy. The workers yell and sing and throw the fish around! Very difficult to get a good picture of it because it happens so fast but really fun to watch!

From Pike's Place Market, we drove past the baseball and football stadiums. The retractable dome roof was open on Safeco Field, the home of the Mariners. That was interesting just to see how it worked. Slides off and slides back on. By the time we returned to the downtown area in the evening the roof was back in place! From this area we drove down to our hotel, the Hampton Inn and Suites by SEA-TAC airport. Got checked in there and dropped off our stuff. Let me just say that this hotel was a slight disappointment after the previous night at the Embassy Suites. The room was small and then internet had some major glitches. Oh well...not everything can be a presidential suite!

We had booked a reservation at the Space Needle for dinner at 7:00 PM. Since we weren't sure how long it would take to get back into town with traffic, we left early and arrived about an hour before our reservation. We took time to walk around outside and get some pictures. Then we headed in to check in for our reservation. Turned out they had an opening and were able to take us early. The nice thing about doing dinner at the Space Needle is that your ticket to the observation deck is included. There is a minimum of $35.00/guest at the restaurant. This isn't hard to do since all the entrees are over $35.00. I wasn't sure exactly what to expect with the food quality. Reviews were good but I was skeptical since ths is a touristy thing to do. The food was excellent. I had the Seattle Clam and Corn chowder to start and the King Salmon for my main course. Rod had a salad and Beef Shortribs for his dinner. Both were very good. Dessert was fun! The space needle is known for its specialty dessert called the Lunar Orbiter. It is an ice cream sundae that is served in a bowl of dry ice which is steaming all over when it is delivered to your table. Not only is it fun, it's good too! The restaurant rotates during dinner and you get a great view of the city at night. We made two revolutions during our dinner. After dinner we climbed the few steps up to the observation deck and took a look around. You can walk 360 degrees and see the city from all angles. Very pretty at night! Checked out the gift shop on the bottom floor on our way out and took some night pictures of the entire Space Needle. It was a great night. I'm not sure it's something you would do over and over but it's something that everyone visiting Seattle should do at least once!

Headed back to the hotel for the evening and packed up for my return trip home. Rod still has a couple days of work to finish but my time is up unfortunately. I'm already looking forward to seeing the other things in the area that we didn't get to this time on our next trip this way!