Day Thirty

Day Thirty

Seattle Day – Our only full day here so a plan was required.  First stop was the Seattle Glass blowing studio, which was near the motel.  Lots of fabulous glass works, and one in particular grab the attention of both of us.  So after some umming & ahhing, & currency calculations, we decided to buy  (see my rant about tax later). It’s a sculpture of a woman’s torso, made in clear glass but with the murano style candy cane circles embedded, mostly on her back, to add colour.  A stunning piece.  And we were able to watch the guy who made it making a large Christmas tree out the back of the studio.  I’ll attach a photo of the style, the ones in the photo are small, only about 8 inches high.  The one he was making was about 2 and a half feet tall, and we watched them attach one of the branches and shape it with scissors and tweezers.  A fascinating process, and it required a team of four helpers, plus the artist.  I also bought a couple of glass pumpkins, they have been such a feature of our trip and these ones at the studio were particularly nice and representative.  So we went straight back to the motel to leave our goodies, they are heavy !!!

We wanted to take the Ferry across to Bainbridge Island, Seattle is famous for it’s Ferry boats, particularly if you have watched Grey’s Anatomy.  So we started wandering our way from the motel to the pier where the ferry leaves, stopping  at the French café again for breakfast and at a few shops along the way. We caught the ferry (only $8 return) and watched the cars load on and pretty much had the boat to ourselves.  Very nice after the mad crush of the busy cities we have been in.  It wasn’t too cold on the ferry, the weather has been grey and overcast and threatening rain but we only got a wee bit wet on the first night and have been lucky since.  It was a lovely trip over to Bainbridge Island, and there are some pretty stellar houses, for I’m sure stellar prices, on the waters edge.  It’s about a 30 minute trip and you end up feeling a world away from the bustle of the city, I can really see the appeal of living there.  We disembarked and hung around the terminal kicking our heels for about 10 minutes to catch the return trip to Seattle.  You can hire bikes etc and there are taxi’s waiting to take you to the commercial area, but sadly we didn’t have time.  There’s never enough time !!  For the return trip, the sun had come out a little and was nicely lighting some of the buildings, but the wind seemed to have got up and it was too cold to stand at the front of the boat for very long.  We disembarked and began wandering back into the city.  Quite a large and noticeable number of homeless people here, and a large percentage with metal health issues.  One guy walking down the street with his trolley of stuff, screaming obscenities to all and sundry.  Another woman pacing back and forth bobbing her head from side to side.  Quite a few peole with cardboard signs saying they are homeless and asking for money, but no one actively approaching you like there were in Chicago.  Scenes like this are unsettling and make me feel uncomfortable, but I still don’t know if there is a solution, or what that might be.

We’d had enough walking by now and time was ticking on, so we made our way to the monorail terminal and paid $2.25 to be taken to the Space Needle.  J wanted to visit the EMP Museum (which had a curious mix of rock and pop culture exhibits, for example the suit worn by the actor in the movie Aliens) and I wanted to visit the Chilhuly Museum.  The museum contained another stunning set of glass sculptures, mostly housed in rooms that were painted black to emphasise the colour.  One room only was painted white and had a ceiling of coloured sculptures, with the light shining through to colour the walls.  There was also a glass house, which contains a huge collection of flower type glass sculptures, all connected together to look like plants.  I was very cheesed off to find it was closed for a private function and I wasn’t allowed to go in.  It truly looked stunning but I had to be content from seeing it from the outside.

The day almost done, it was time to wander back to the motel and rest our feet for a bit before finding eats.  There was a whisky bar recommended in Seattle’s top 10 guide book, and it was only a couple of blocks away.  What’s a person to do ?  We went there of course, and my what a stellar range they had.  Good food as well, AND they served sparkling wine by the glass, AND it was actually sparkling and not flat.  Believe me that’s rare in this country, I have some educating to do J  J was able to sample a few whisky’s he had never tried before and the wait staff were very affable and friendly, so it was a lovely last night in Seattle.  A nice place, I would quite happily come back here and spend more time.

The tax rant – I don’t think we’ve mentioned this before, and we keep meaning to.  Everything here has tax added, much like gst.  However it is never (or at least very rarely) included in the stated price, so if something says $100 on the label, by the time your card is swiped, the prices has been jacked up to $110.  This is intensely irritating, why would you just not include it in the stated price ????  It’s not like it’s optional, or can be avoided in any way.  So we have been caught a few times, where we may have counted the right money to speed up the transaction and clear our wallet of the cursed $1 bill, only to find we don’t have enough once the tax is added.  This generates much gnashing of teeth.  You would think we had learned by now, but we are clearly pretty thick, because we haven’t and still get that nasty surprise when we come to sign the credit card slip.