After my visit to Sky Nursery on Wednesday, I met Nigel in town for a lovely lunch, and since it still hadn't started raining again, I decided to follow that with a walk through the city streets to Pike Place Market and then back again to Nigel's office building. I thought maybe a walk in the big city would be a nice change of pace for me, from peering into other people's yards and gardens. The Winter Walk-Off is a yearly meme hosted by Les at A Tidewater Gardener. The idea is to take a walk somewhere and take pictures and post about it, but without ever showing any pictures of your own home or gardens. You can start at your own house and walk in your own town, or you can drive somewhere and walk from there. So I drove to downtown Seattle, and took pictures of big buildings and landmarks.
My walk in town started here at the restaurant
Sazerac.
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| Nigel's office building -- Fourth and Madison -- just a little way down the street |
From there I headed down to Third Ave. and walked along the street toward
Benaroya Hall, home of the Seattle Symphony Orchestra.
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| The View down Third Ave. |
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| Decorative tree grate |
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| I pass a florist's shop |
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| Young Flowers, Old Lady |
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| Right next door to the florists' is a Starbucks. In fact, on my walk I pass several, practically one on every street corner |
Not far from there, I pass an interesting building labeled
Seattle Tower, which I Google when I get back home.
The 27-story Seattle Tower, originally known as the Northern Life Tower,
is Seattle's first art-deco tower. Its distinctive, ziggurat exterior
is clad in 33 shades of brick designed to effect a gradient which
lightens from the bottom to the top of the building.
Finally I reach
Benaroya Hall. Many people don't realize how very hilly Seattle is. This set of steps goes down the sidewalk beside the hall.
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| A waterfall and plantings outside the symphony hall |
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| A closeup of the waterfall |
I was so taken with the waterfall, I managed not to get any photos of the hall itself, which occupies an entire city block.
Across the street from the hall is the
Seattle Art Museum (SAM).
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| Art deco designs on the side of the museum |
Hammering Man rests his arm each evening and on Labor Day.
On a diagonal across from the Seattle Art Museum is the
Harbor Steps Apartments. Nigel and I lived there for two months when we first came here, while waiting for our house back in Massachusetts to sell.
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| It's not much to look at |
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| I head down the harbor steps toward that first landing |
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| Past the Harbor Steps fountain |
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| My destination -- Post Alley, which leads to Pike Place Market |
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| I pass a view of the harbor and the Seattle Great Wheel |
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| The Gum Wall -- each of those spots of color is a piece of already chewed gum stuck to the brick |
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| Eeeeewww! |
Finally I reach the market. Officially it's called
Pike Place Market, but I understand no one in Seattle calls it that. To Seattleites, it's just the market.
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| On the left is a building full of vendor stalls, on the right, individual shops |
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| Lots of neon signs inside the building |
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| Who doesn't want fresh restrooms? |
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| An accordion player was entertaining the masses |
Fresh fish vendors abound in the market. Some of them are renowned for throwing fish back and forth. Read about it
here.
I pass plenty of cut flower vendors too.
As well as vendors of everything under the sun.
It was right about this point that my camera's battery died and shut down the camera. So I took out my iPhone and used the camera in that.
You can buy all sorts of stuff at the market besides food, flowers, baked goods and fish. There are plenty of talented craft vendors.
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| I thought this was an interesting piece of metalwork. |
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| If you have a little one you can get cute decorated clothing for them. |
Since my camera's battery had packed it in, I tried experimenting with the iPhone's pan capability. Below is the Seattle waterfront. From far left: sports fields
Safeco Field (baseball) and
CenturyLink Field
(football and soccer), the
Seattle Great Wheel, in the distance West
Seattle, in the far distance, Bainbridge Island and the Olympic
Peninsula. If you squint maybe you can see the Olympic Mountains on the
right. The highway below is state Highway 99, aka the
Alaskan Way Viaduct, which the city is
currently working on burying in a tunnel, using a tunnel-boring machine called
Bertha.
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| See the mountains in the distance? |
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| Buildings opposite the market |
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| Signs from the many shops at the market |
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| If I hadn't just eaten lunch I would have been very tempted |
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| Another food vendor at the market that always tempts my tum -- Mee Sum Pastry -- has BBQ Pork Hom Bow to die for! |
After my stroll through Pike Place Market I headed up Pike Street to Fourth Ave.
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| The view up Pike Street toward the Convention Center |
My last stop before getting back in my car to drive home was the Seattle Public Library. It's across from Nigel's office building (Fourth and Madison).
The Seattle Public Library's Central Library building was designed by Rem Koolhaas and Joshua Prince-Ramus of OMA/LMN, and opened to the public on May 23, 2004. The glass and steel building is 11 stories high. Go to the link to learn more about this striking building.
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| The Seattle Public Library's Central Library -- the North side |
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| The South side of the building |
I hope you enjoyed this walk around Seattle. If you check out Les's post
here, you'll find links in the comments to posts by other bloggers about their walks. You can also read about a walk Les took in downtown Norfolk.
And if you're so inclined, be sure to post your own walk, and link to it in the comments on A Tidewater Gardener.
