On the second day of the Seattle trip, Al and I were on our own with no real plans since Brian and Mike had to work and Roger had to go to school. We walked to the Seattle Center area, home of the Space Needle. We had considered going to the top of the Space Needle but it was typical Seattle weather (overcast and drizzle) so we decided to pass. Seattle Center is also home to a science museum, a music memoriabilia collection, and Key Arean (former home of the Seattle Supersonics). Overall I wasn't too impressed with Seattle Center and was a little confused to see a skate park right next to a former NBA arena. We then headed back down to the water as we walked through a sculpture park. The sculpture park was on the side of one of many hills in Seattle and there were some pretty weird sculptures. One was the top half of a house built into the side of the hill and people were invited to stand on the roof. We stopped by the piers and found a 1 hour boat tour of the Elliott Bay. There were several tours throughout the day so we decided to walk around and do the boat tour later in the day. We then went to the Columbia Center (the tallest building in Seattle) and took the elevator to the 40th floor Starbucks. There is an observation deck on the higher floors but we decided that a drink and a 40th floor view was better than paying for a view from the 76th floor. We then made our way back to Pike's Place Market, exploring some of the outdoors stores in route, for some lunch. I had the salmon and chips at a fish market and sat at the counter and watch the guys crack and steam crabs for customers. By that time, we walked down the hill for our boat tour. The boat tour turned out to be one of the best parts of the trip. It was a totally different view of the city and adjacent port and the tour guide was great at telling us the history of the city. We then walked our way back to Brian's apartment, met up with the crew (Brian, Roger, and Mike) and walked down to the Mariners game. Our experience at Safeco Field will be described in an upcoming blog post. After the game, we once again walked back through downtown Seattle to Brian's house, doing our best to avoid a host of shady characters.
On the last full day of the trip, we planned to go to the second of two sports events on the weekend: a University of Washington football game. Besides being the home team and my mother being an alumni, I was also rooting for UW because they were playing Arizona, lead by former UM coach Rich Rodriguez. Before the game, Mike's roommate Jake, who like Roger I knew and was friendly with at UM, met up with us at Brian's apartment. Since it was raining rather heavy, we watched College Gameday and a couple of the early games. We then headed around Lake Union to the UW campus area. We ate lunch at a BBQ food truck, where we met up with Mike, that I thought was pretty good. I think Al, the South Carolina BBQ expert in our crew, thought it was pretty good too. We then walked to and around the UW campus with Roger as our unofficial tour guide. We stopped in at their student union, which was a lot newer and more modern than Univ. of Michigan's. As game time approached, the rain picked up and we walked into the stadium. There wasn't a lot going on in the stadium beforehand, and in hindsight we should have explored the tailgating culture, but I think all wanted to get out of the rain. Husky Stadium was recently renovated with flat screen TVs everywhere and a beer garden on the practice field just beyond one set of endzone stands. The game was entertaining with Washington winning 31-13. Runningbacks Bishop Sankey and Ka'Deem Carey of Washington and Arizona respectively were the stars for their teams. We braved out the weather in our uncovered endzone seats as we saw the direction of the rain switch nearly every quarter. Once we got back to Brian's place, we ate dinner at a tavern a few blocks from his house. I had a hamburger and one of the taverns many beer choices. We once again went to bed early as both Al and I had early flights the next morning. Roger and Brian were gracious enough to give us a ride to the airport the next morning so we didn't have to book a cab. Although my flight was early, it was good to get back to Detroit at a decent time to relax before work the next day.
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