There is coffee for sale pretty much everywhere in this city. Coffee shops may well outnumber people in Seattle. I am old enough to remember a time when coffee was a thing adults made at home, and nobody purchased a paper cup full while out and about, unless they were on a road trip and they stopped at a convenience store or a gas station. Kids never touched the stuff. The flavor options were coffee or *checks notes* also coffee. Nothing looked like a milkshake. Somewhere along the way, all of that changed. I think the seed may have been planted where Cas and I were yesterday morning. We visited the original Starbucks. Home of the Carmel Macchiato. Land of the ubiquitous paper cup. Spot that has elementary aged kids demanding coffee. I don’t know how I feel about that one, honestly. Little kids have favorite Starbucks orders. Seems wrong, somehow, but I can’t put my finger on it. When I was a little kid, that was just as much a grown up beverage as beer or wine. I wanted nothing to do with coffee, and to reinforce that, my grandfather would assure me that coffee would, “put hair on your chest.” I didn’t 100% believe him, but the idea was still unappealing for a little girl, I assure you.
But we’re here in Seattle, birthplace of Starbucks and reason so many kids have a favorite Frappuccino. So we had to visit. Perhaps it was a bit of rebellion, but we both got their signature Pike Place drip coffee. Plain, unadorned and really, quite good. It was utterly necessary, though. I mean, when in Rome, right?
Anyhow, after that, we took another stroll through Pike Place Market, our Pike Place coffees in hand. This time, I got a decent photo of the guys throwing the fish. It’s very silly, and I don’t know if it makes the seafood taste better, but they seem to enjoy tossing the fish about when preparing to wrap it up and complete a sale. It was cute.
After that, we headed to a monorail station. Seattle has a light rail, a monorail and a decent bunch of buses, but the monorail goes from a spot right next to our hotel to the famous Space Needle. And we had timed entry tickets. We got to the end of the monorail line and hopped off. We instantly saw the option to visit the Chihuly Garden and Glass exhibit. Our Space Needle tickets were actually combo tickets, so we started our adventure with the cool glass sculptures. We managed to walk in within a few minutes of a free guided tour, and that was very interesting. Dale Chihuly is an interesting guy, and if you have ever seen a light fixture or a tabletop sculpture out in the world somewhere that looks like a Medusa head full of glass tubes, that’s either him or someone he inspired. It was a really neat collection, culminating in a “glass house” and a garden. Everywhere you look, there was interesting blown glass art. The garden had flowers and grasses interspersed with the art, causing me to wonder about how one gets a job as a gardener there. Must be pretty competitive.
After the beautiful glass museum, we stepped into the Museum of Pop Culture. There was some truly cool stuff- a fragment of a burnt-up-and-smashed Jimi Hendrix guitar, a rhinestone studded James Brown outfit- and there was a lot of stuff I flat didn’t care about. Cas and I got rid of our cable TV when we moved in together, and I have not kept up with a single Kardashian. I didn’t find the performance outfits of various pop stars as interesting as I was supposed to, I guess. It was a cool museum, but a lot of pop culture has passed me by. I’m fine with that, if you want the truth.
But the Museum of Pop Culture, was overall pretty interesting, if for no other reason than its unique architecture. And it closed at five. Our tickets to the Space Needle were timed at 6:15. (I tried for a sunset-adjacent time when booking back in Dallas), and there was absolutely nothing to do in between. We stepped into a food court space, and all but two of the establishments were closed. We weren’t hungry, and I didn’t feel munch like a cup of coffee. It was puzzling that all of these places designed to serve food were shutting down at or before dinner time.
So we asked the nice lady at the ticket window of the Space Needle if we could head in early. Permission granted. We were up top well before our appointed time, but no worries, we didn’t miss out on a beautiful sunset or anything. Mostly because the sky was too cloudy for any beautiful sunsets to occur. We did get to gawk at the skyline and the pretty mountains in the background for a while, though. It was pretty neat.
From there, we were kind of running on empty. We took the monorail back to the neighborhood where our hotel is, and Cas found a nice restaurant where they served us some very yummy dumplings and some nice Jasmine Tea. It was exactly perfect to round out the day, and we’re all set for another bit of adventure today.
Oh- today- yeah. Since our trip started late, Cas called the airline and then spoke with the hotel staff. We pushed our flight to Friday and added another night on here, so hooray! We get another day in Seattle! Which is just fine, because we originally packed for that many days, anyway. Funny.
But here we go. Off for more adventure. I wonder if there’s a spot around here where I can grab a cup of coffee…
Here, again, are our photos tinyurl.com/DunlapSeattle
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