Everything I’ve ever heard about Seattle, besides the space needle, has to do with the high probability of rain. In fact, the possibility of rain in the PNW and Washington state was what we were most prepared for on our trip out there. That fact has been confirmed in the movies too; Sleepless in Seattle, The art of Racing in the Rain, The Hand that Rocks the Cradle, and so on….. So of course being prepared for and expecting rain meant that we didn’t see any rain at all whatsoever. Come to find out, our home state of Alabama ranks 4th in the nation for rainfall, where the state of Washington ranks 29th. (Birmingham, Alabama gets 56 inches/yr and Seattle Washington gets 37 inches/yr average) I’m guessing it’s because Alabama gets dumped on for about a week every spring and every fall fall. Washington, it seems, just keeps a nice steady light rain for months and months and months at a time. We had clear skies and sunshine the entire time!! This is probably the exact reason why my nice new raincoat Shannon had gotten me for the trip, got left behind. I hope that whoever has it now is taking good care of it.

It was lunchtime on Shannon’s birthday, so we headed to Pike Place.

There was so much to take in in the Pike Place Market. I wanted to stop and look at each and every stall carefully, but that’s not really Shannon’s thing. It was his birthday, and that meant he got to decide how we spent our time in Seattle. He lead the way and we scooted through the market searching for the best lunch options. There were lots!

After being overwhelmed by endless choices, we settled on “The world’s most fabulous famous, freshest and finest fish” at Jack’s Fish spot. We split a dozen raw oysters, I had Cioppino, and Shannon had clam chowder. We could have done better on our choices, (and we didn’t think the oysters were as good as the gulf coast ones we’re used to eating at home). I still regret not going for the dungenesss crab.

I’d looked up “The top 10 things to do in Seattle” , and several you tube videos, but this is the one I took notes from. Almost all of them mentioned the gum wall, which was just a quick flight of stairs down from Pike Place market, so that was the one thing that I requested that we check out. I found it to be exceptionally fascinating. Wikipedia mentions that it is one of the top 5 germiest attractions, second only to the Blarney Stone.

Leading up to this trip, through July, we had been watching the news about the Seattle riots that resulted from the George Floyd protests. We’d been keeping track of the takeover of CHOP (Capitol Hill Organized Protest) which was later renamed CHAZ (Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone). We visited at the end of August, when it had just recently dissipated, but Shannon was interested to go and see the area that we’d been watching on TV. What we found, was a mostly abandoned, quiet few city blocks with a lot of incredible street art. It was surrounding the Cal-Anderson Park, which at the time of our visit, had a large tent city complete with vegetable gardens. Here’s a video that my phone put together of the photos I took while we were there:

We found the East Seattle Police precinct that was abandoned just prior to the occupation, with broken glass, busted concrete, and chain link surrounding it. It was interesting to walk through the streets, and to recognize the places we’d watched during the chaos only a month before.

We were fortunate to have the weather that we had, and Seattle was definitely a place that we’d wanted to see. There wasn’t enough time to see all that it has to offer. Couldn’t get excited about paying $30 each for the Space needle when we’d just come from Mount Rainier and the Olympic Coast.

The one thing I wanted to see that I felt that I missed out on, was the Fremont troll. Next time!

” Seattle I don’t know why you stand under the clouds expecting to stay dry. Can’t you see the day you’ll ever win that battle is the day they’ll take the rain out of Seattle” – Jason Walker