Seattle

My second day in Seattle started as most of my days start, with breakfast. I love staying somewhere that will provide me with a breakfast, even if it is just stale coffee and a couple of pieces of toast. Anything so I don't have to go out and try and find something to eat. I do class myself as a morning person, but I prefer not to have to hunt for food first thing. I was talking to Netta, a girl in my dorm, neither of us was sure what we wanted to do that day, so we decided that we would do it together. Then I saw J, I had chatted with him the night before, he was at a lose end and decided to join us too. And he told his room mate, Phillip, so we four set out for a day of wandering. And we had a typical Seattle day to do it in, rain. It was the first rain I had seen in Seattle and since it is something that Seattle is famous for, I didn't mind too much.
We walked up to the public library and then walked around inside. J had thought that the book spiral was actually a small spiralling book case, but is actually several gently sloping floors with large stacks of books on it. It is still cool. After that we back tracked a little to go to Pioneer Square, I had already walked through here on my walk to the hostel, without realising it. This is one of the original parts of Seattle and is where the underground tour starts from. We then headed up First St. to Pike market and walked around there. This is a nice market, packed of course, as any "famous" market is. We then went into the first Starbucks, which doesn't look like anything special. We took the taste test for their new instant coffee and I got it right. I think it's because the English drink a lot of instant coffee that I could tell the difference between the fresh brewed and instant coffee. Anyway it is an excellent place for a photo.
J decided that he was going to cook us all dinner that night as he loves cooking and I don't think that the three of us were terribly bothered about who cooked for us. So J left us to go and buy ingredients and to get the beef marinading. Philip went off to do his thing which left Netta and I. We decided that we actually did want to go on the underground tour and headed back to Pioneer Square.
When the Pioneer Square area of Seattle was first built it was at sea level which posed a problem in that it was sometimes flooded. Then when the toilet was invented and a few toilets hooked up, they ran the sewage pipes into the sea. The high tide would bring some of this back into the toilets. Then most of the area was burned to ground in a huge fire, so the city fathers decided to rebuild and do something about the areas problems. They said that all buildings had to be made of stone and would have to be raised up above sea level. The business owners had no problem with the first idea but didn't want to wait for the city to raise the streets and so just started to rebuild. The city decided to go ahead and raise the streets, so they built walls at each side of the street on the edges of the pavements and then filled in the space between the two walls. This meant that when you left a shop, you came out onto the pavement and there was a huge wall in front of you. Between First and Second street the wall was ten feet high, between Second and Third st, fifteen feet high and so on. The city provided ladders so you could get from the businesses now below street level, up to the street. Then later they provided stairs, but it took them a few more years and a few deaths before they put in guard rails on the stairs. Eventually the city covered up the pavement areas and the first floors of a lot of buildings disappeared from view. The buildings owners and shoppers continued to use the covered floors, just accessing them from the second floors of the buildings. This was all closed down in 1907 due to fears of the plague and sealed up. It is a really cool tour and I would definitely recommend it.
After the tour was down Netta and I went our separate ways and I headed back to the public library. I had found out that they received copies of the Times and decided to get my newspaper fix. When I was done reading my news the old fashioned way I headed back to the hostel and bumped into Chrissie, another girl who I was sharing the dorm with. She was heading out for dinner so I joined her for a beer. We went to the Pyramid Ale house and a nice pint. I went back to the hostel where J had dinner cooked for us. We sat down to garlic mashed potatoes, green beans, roast beef and garlic bread. It was a great dinner. To top it off Phillip and J had smuggled in two bottles of red wine into their room so after dinner we continued the party up there. Obviously the wine didn't last long between all of us, so joined by Chrissie we headed to a local bar on the corner. This place was a dive, there is no other way to describe it, frequented by the homeless and down and out of Seattle. The beer was good and the regulars complimented us on our skill in finding a local bar. None of us volunteered the info that we were just staying up the road. I definitely didn't want any one following me back that night, or any night!!