Sam and I started off our last day in Seattle with a short walk to Pioneer Square to take the Underground Tour.
Afterwards we headed to the Market to meet Byron for lunch. I had my third and final Mac&Cheese of the trip (the second occurred when I slipped out of the Market on Saturday while everyone else was shopping for that surf n’ turf dinner).
We then went to Pike Place Chowder for a repeat of Friday afternoon’s lunch. Sam said it was the best clam chowder she’s ever had and I can’t disagree. Of everything in Seattle, I have to admit, the thing I most looked forward to (other than seeing my friends, of course) was this chowder, bisque and mac&cheese. I’d had the same meal 2.5 years ago, except this time I added the crab sandwich after Byron introduced it to me on Friday.
After we said our goodbyes Sam and I hustled to the library. We had three points of interest to see and we had less than 90 minutes to fit it in. We went up to the 10th floor of the library, which doesn’t have a lookout point, but a few interesting views down into the library as well as the surrounding structure.
Next, we scrambled down to the Columbia Tower and made our way to the 76th floor. In the first two shots below pay special attention to that building at the corner of pioneer square with the pyramidal roof. Smith Tower was our next destination.
In the photo below you can see the old haunted hospital on the hill (the reddish building on the hill in the middle of the shot) where Byron had taken me to take photos the evening before.
As we left the Columbia Tower it was nearly 3pm and Byron had advised us to be on the metro to the airport by 2:45. Our flight wasn’t until 5:45 and being used to LAX we were confident we didn’t really need to get to the airport hours before our flight. We ran down to Smith Tower in a hurry and when we got inside we inquired with the front desk about going up to the Chinese Room on the 35th floor. We were informed that the room was only open on Saturday and Sunday. We groaned and mentioned that we had to leave to go to Los Angeles in a few hours and we’d only just heard of the room the day before, which was true as we had learned about it on the Argosy Cruise.
The front desk attendant leaned over and whispered “I can get you in.” The woman nodded to the elevator operator and we were whisked inside an old style manually operated brass and copper elevator from 1914.
At the top the attendant said “we’re normally closed on weekdays, so you guys’ll be the only ones here.” She went over to the sliding glass door that lead to the 360 degree balcony and said “usually they lock this when the room’s not open but… okay – it’s open today – just press the button and call me when you folks are done and I’ll come get ya.” We slipped out into the open air balcony to take photographs.
The shot below is of the Columbia Tower, where we’d been only minutes earlier looking in the same direction.
We found it humorous that we were up in this tourist spot completely alone. We could have spent hours there just hanging out if we didn’t have a plane to catch. Sam made sure to sit in the famous “wishing chair” before we left. The attendant told us on the way back down that normally the room hosts up to two hundred people – and whole cruises come by and visit the room together. On a regular day the ride up is free, but there is a $7.50 charge to come back down. Our visit was completely free of charges and people.
