seattle day one

Well the five hour plane trip and the slog with the cases from airport to light rail to cab happened and it was sometimes horrible but that is the traveller's lot. As soon as I got to the Madison Park Starbucks where the divine Miss Susan Van Cott is working the horror melted away and I was home!   Miss V C is giving Seattle a try. She may stay a little while longer but there is the whiff of change in the wind and Connecticut might be its direction. She is in a wonderful old twenties apartment block called The Biltmore. We are sharing a Queen size bed and she doesn't snore.  Our first day out together is documented below
This is a stunning house at the bottom of E Loretta and once the whole area would have been covered with its like.

We bused through downtown Seattle which could have been Melbourne or Sydney  Hardly any Victorian edifices left.

This area is called Pioneer Square and has been saved from complete devastation. It is very reminiscent of The Rocks area in Sydney.

This is Occidental St which in the Klondike gold rush was the centre of vice and giggly goings on

And we are here because Miss VC is auditioning as a tour guide of subterranean Seattle covered over after the fire of 1889. Here are some of a typical audience she can expect should she get the job

 The square is full of statuary and historic busts

Pioneer Square in 1909

This is the venue for the first stage of the tour - an old bar founded by a pivotal character in the settlement of old Seattle, Doc Maynard. The absurdly energetic guide obviously modeled her style on Jan Hooks from the Alamo sequence in "Pee Wee's Big Adventure"  Miss VC says  should she get the job she will treat her audience even more like congenital idiots.

The fabulous bar mirror

This is one of the first buidlings to be erected after the fire and over the streets of old Seattle. we would soon plunge below into the once teeming alleys.

  The old cafe next door

We are about to go down some steps to the other world

 I am not going to explain the history of this world below. There was an earthquake in 1949   and a lot of the carefully placed rubble is from that.

Up for air

And down again

This place has got EVERYTHING

And here is the brilliant Rose who was our guide for this section

These were at and above street level once

The studious woman with the specs is Miss VC swatting up

Part of a bank in the gold rush days

The destroyed Otis elevator workings from the 49 quake

 I was fascinated by their fascination with pigeons

After a fab pub lunch we walked up Second Ave

The building on the left had been an old movie palace . Now jeans shops.

 Our lecky bus comes to take us right home

The vintage shop opposite The Biltmore.

 This block was the domicile  for the servants and lackeys of the nobs in the big house over the road

 And now where the big nobs lived   THE BILTMORE

Scary huh?  Can you see them?

Artwork in the lift

 More soon!!!!