The past few days have been an absolute blur of activity.
During the first day of this visit to Seattle/etc., I saw Pike Place and began to piece together the madness that is downtown Seattle. Through a maze of homeless people and more Starbucks locations than I can count, I started to acclimate. This was after almost 36 hours on zero sleep. Oh, did I forget to mention that we attended a Flogging Molly / Dropkick Murphy show on the first day? Yeah. I was barely even conscious during this. Great show but I was in no way ready to enjoy it.
On day two we ended up visiting a Nordic heritage museum and ate at a place which shared the name of a town my mother used to haunt: Portage. You can figure it out with that much information.
On day three it was time to hop the border and see Vancouver for the first time. I must say that I am absolutely impressed by the city of Vancouver. It is such a clean, beautiful place, and the Canadian people are an uncannily friendly bunch. Our agenda was non-existent but we walked along a bay, visited Stanley Park and the Vancouver Aquarium, and topped it off with a visit to Granville Island Market. We watched the sun drop over the bay and I sat in astonishment at what I was fortunate to witness.
Today is day four and it was an absolute legend of a day. We decided early on that the first order of business was to visit the Woodland Park Zoo and we were not disappointed. They had some of the finest and immersive wildlife experiences I have seen to date. I have always been a sucker for wildlife parks of all kinds and this was no exception. Top notch stuff. Zoo knocked off the list, we decided to visit Puget Sound and walked the beaches. We stuck around for a sunset that rivals anything I have ever witnessed before. The sun disappeared behind the Olympic range and cast colors that are too many to name. It was amazing and the day was only just ending. Up next was the Space Needle. We arrived approx. an hour and a half prior to closing time and as we approached I could feel a sense of the staggering size of the structure. Once we hopped on the express elevator and walked out onto the catwalk, it was strikingly apparent how far away the ground was. The vertigo faded quickly and I was standing in stupid amazement looking at the city from 500+ feet. If this weren’t enough, the full moon (99%+) rose as the sun dropped, casting a pale blue hue over the entire cityscape. As I was making a lap around the rotating glass deck, I happened to glance the direction of SEA-TAC and saw 4 planes all in their final approach for landing. This continued the entire time we were at the Space Needle, almost an hour and a half.
This is single-handedly one of the most enjoyable trips I have ever had the privilege of experiencing. I am truly fortunate.
More to follow as the week moves on.