Eric & Lucie's Bus Trip: Seattle, WA

After two back to back ascents of Rainier, we definitely felt like taking a break. Seattle was right next door and a couple of days of city life sounded like a nice change of pace, so there we went. We drove to Seattle on June 11. Our first stop was of course the big Marmot Mountaineering shop in Bellevue (a suburb of Seattle). We spent most of an afternoon (and too many $) there. We then drove to the local Wal-Mart in Renton which would be our accommodations for the next few days.

We spent three days walking the streets of downtown Seattle and enjoying city life. We loved it! Our favorite city in the US will always be NY but Seattle comes next...

We walked around Pioneer's square. Spent hours hanging out at the colorful Pike Place market which reminded us of the markets you can find in any European town. We did the "tourist thing" and took the monorail to the "City Center" where remains of 1962 World's fair are located, such as the Space Needle and the Experience Music Project (EMP) building. We really liked the EMP building, a mind blowing shrine to rock'n roll memorabilia designed by the architect Frank Ghery who also built the famous Guggenheim museum in Bilbao, Spain. We visited the campus of the University of Washington and hung out in the "U-district". We saw a couple of French movies at the Landmark Theatres (a consortium of old movie theatres that all show foreign or out of the mainstream movies) and enjoyed ethnic food at some of the many good restaurants that Seattle has to offer.

After a busy couple of days, we concluded that we were having way too much fun and getting lazy (besides spending way too much money). We also had a lot more climbing to do. We checked the forecast for the North Cascades and since good weather was announced, we left Seattle for Bellingham to climb Mount Baker.