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Seattle Underground!

Mar 5, 2007
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One of the things you notice when working for Microsoft is that very few of your colleagues are locals. (By "local", I mean Seattle-ites -- there are plenty of Americans but more often than not they've moved to the Northwest for Uncle Bill.) So I felt it was time for some of the EHS crew who are outsiders all to go on an outing to explore some of the tourist-y things that Seattle has to offer... you know, the kind of stuff you tend to postpone until another day because you think you'll have plenty of time for that later -- in the meantime you have bigger fish to fry like going to Canada, or overseas and boom! you end up never going.

After sending out an S+, thirteen of us turned out in our Sunday finest to do the Seattle Underground tour. A stunningly sunny day (for the tail end of a Seattle winter) ensured we had a pleasant day learning about the history of Seattle, and how the wise fathers of this city built it not once but twice on a tidal plain, ensuring that at high tide the streets would go under water. Even after a fire swept away much of the original city (thus presenting an opportunity to start from scratch and do it right), expediency demanded they repeat the same mistakes... To cut a long story short, their ingenious solution to flooding? Keep the buildings but raise the streets themselves, with the 'ground floor' now being below road level... I won't spoil the tour by revealing too much more, but suffice to say that the tour (90 minutes of it) was well worth the price of admission.

Little did we know how popular the tour would be; after originally planning on the 11am tour and missing out on tickets, we killed some time until the next free slot at 1pm by going up the Smith Tower (pictured above right). Named after the typewriter guy of Smith-Corona fame, it was the tallest building outside of New York when it was built. The observation deck gives a great view of the city... heck it might even be better than the Space Needle since (a) it's cheaper to go up it, and (b) you can't see the Space Needle from the Space Needle :). Notice the car park that looks like it's rising out of the pavement in the foreground... It gives you an idea of the slope of the land, as well as an idea of how unsentimental Seattle town planners must have been back in the 60's when the hotel that was originally sited there was torn down for this concrete monstrosity.

Above left is me sitting in the Chinese room in the Smith Tower observation deck on the 35th floor. The Chinese room is so-named because it's filled with Chinese artifacts (mainly intricately carved furniture as per the pic) given to Mr Smith by the last Empress of China.

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Above is a pic of some of the EHS crew + friends that managed to take a break from their very important work to let their hair down and play. Below right is our illustrious tour guide, who was funny from go to whoa. Above his head: the skylight that used to light the underground passageways of underground Seattle (to find out more you need to do the tour!).

After the tour and much agonising deliberation, we headed down to the Seattle Center. Who knew parking down that end of town (especially reverse parking -- I'm looking at you Sana) would be so difficult...? Some of us wandered around to take in the sights, while the rest of us (including yours truly) kicked back for some pizza at Zeeks. Hmmm the Space Needle looks as impressive up close as it does from a distance....

Okay enough blogging for one night. As usual, more photos on Picasaweb.