Adventures Underground.
I’m in Washington D.C. today for JDRF’s Government Day (more on that later…) but I have been meaning to share my recent trip to Seattle. A few days prior to my trip to Oregon to continue wedding plans, Erik and I went Seattle for a family wedding. We had a free afternoon while we were there and did some exploring…
Erik had heard about the Seattle Underground Tour from a co-worker, so we decided to check it out. The Seattle Underground is the original first floor of the city of Seattle. Since Seattle is on a shore, it was constantly being flooded in the 19th century whenever the tide would come out. After a fire, Seattle made two decision: rebuild in brick or stone and build streets that are one or two stories higher, to keep out the water (it also helped with the plumbing system so things didn’t “back up” during the tide – eww!). However, during construction of the new roads, business owners rebuilt their stores at the original street level. This a “waffle” pattern to the city, with the roads up top and the stores below. It was very inconvenient and our tour guide explained how occasionally drunk men would climb up the ladders to the “street level” get lost looking for their horse, and then fall back down to the “store level”! Ouch!
This is the original store of a butcher. After all the stores started using the new street level, the old street level fell to disuse and disrepair. Our tour guide told us that at one point, there were thousands of rats in the underground. Yuck! So they had to close it down and exterminate it. Eventually they were able to reopen it. Some of the underground is now used as basements, but many are still abandoned. A few were rescued and are now part of the Seattle Underground tour. Mostly you can just see the outline of where stores used to be, but some original items are still there.
We also had some fun exploring some stores in the Pioneer Square of downtown Seattle. I discovered these cute little ducks appropriately dressed for the Seattle weather:
I also had fun playing with these magnetic rocks. But boy are they heavy!
Soon after, we had to head back to the hotel to get ready for the wedding rehearsal (Erik and his mom were in the wedding). But it was fun to do a bit of sight-seeing and you don’t often get to go underground of a major US city. If you’re ever in Seattle, I highly recommend you go!
