Seattle Day 1

After a coffee in the hostel I wandered over to Pikes Place Market, this market has been operating here for years and features farmers and only independent traders and crafts people (Apart from one certain coffee shop) As today was Easter Sunday most of the fresh food stalls were closed but there was still a vibrant buzz about the place with lots of trinket and crafts people selling their wares. There was also a long section which was full of flower sellers, and tulips seemed to be the flower of the season. There are many little independent traders amongst the shop units that make-up one half of the market area and these include that small independent coffee shop – Starbucks. The market has very strict rules about who can and cannot run a shop or stall in the market (no chains or corporates), but as this is Starbucks first store (where it all began) they've managed to stay, and judging by the queue to get in, it helps to draw the crowds to the Market. I didn't bother with it as I'm not too keen on their coffee anyway. Instead I joined the queue for a tiny Russian Bakery where I bought a 'Perogie?!?' a sort of folded pasty with mince beef, onion and flaky pastry – it was fantastic and only a couple of dollars.
It had started off as a beautiful clear day but had now clouded over and starteded to get a little chilly. As I wandered around the town centre I came across the Seattle Underground Tour. I was just in time for the 2pm trip so I paid up and went in to what I thought was a small room, it turned out there were about 100 people in a room laid out with benches in an old time bar. A guy at the bar area had just started to give a history of Seattle pock-marked with lots of 'in jokes' about America (Which half of us tourists did not get) Eventually we were shepherded outside and split into 3 groups and then set of with a tour guide across the square outside to a door way in a building over the street. This led down into a building basement. The floor was very uneven and cracked and it seemed like the whole of the lever of the building had been abandoned. This was indeed the case, when Seattle was built it was on the mudflats for the Puget sound. At high tides the water level was so high that it would flood out some of the buildings and also blow out of the sewers -which didn't work very well as they were all below the high tide-mark! So the people of Seattle decided to put the sewers higher, this meant putting the roads higher (30ft higher!) The roads were not butt up to the buildings though so from the road you would have to descend a ladder to reach the footpath (pavement). This was not practicable so people simply put walkways over to the 1st floor and used this floor as the 'ground' floor and used the lower floor as a basement. Eventually the gap between the roads and the buildings were capped over with a pavement so the old pavement became a sort of secondary thoroughfare/storage area & drinking dens (in the Prohibition Era). The tour took us down a three of these passage ways through basements and old 'sidewalks' under the streets. Much of the detritus has been left where it was and it was nice to see something that hadn't been sanitized and cleaned as so much 'history' is in the US. The guide gave us and interesting story about the local 'seamstresses'. As this was a trading and supplies town for the gold rush era and a major port to boot, there were a lot 'seamstresses' in town. One of them managed to convince the town council that she could run a very good house and she was allowed to continue, of course she had to pay a tax on every 'jacket repair' or 'trouser hemming' that her ladies (and allegedly a couple of 'tailors') provided. So much so, enough money was raised to build and equip a large school. Strangely the school was never named after her!
On leaving the Tour, I worked my way up to the Hostel and enquired where the car-park they use was, The receptionist gave me directions and I walked out to find it first before moving the car. The good news was, it was only round the corner from where the car was parked, the bad news was it was closed as it was Easter Sunday and wouldn't open till 6am Monday morning – the same time the meter my car was parked on would come into effect, early start for me then.