May 19 Seattle
Early in
the morning, the ship sailed into Puget Sound en route to Elliot Bay where she
docked at Port of Seattle Pier 66, within a 10 minute walk of the city center.
From the deck of the ship to the left you could see the Seattle Space Needle.
To the right Seattle’s Great Wheel, giant ferris wheel, and further distant, the
Seattle Seahawks football team’s Century Link Field and the Seattle Mariners
baseball team’s Safeco Field. The sky
was cloudy with a light wind and the temperature was 10 C. There was a 60%
chance of rain.
We were
the first table to be seated for breakfast. A couple from Newfoundland joined
us. Since we selected a ship’s excursion
for sightseeing today, we needed to get our tour stickers and wait in the
Celebrity Theater for the tour number to be called. All three buses for this trip pulled away
from the Port of Seattle terminal for the 50 minute drive to Paine Field
Airport for the Future Flight Exhibit and the Boeing factory tour. There was a short rain shower half way to the
tour.
We had to
leave cameras, cell phones, purses, backpacks and other bags either in the
locked bus or lockers in the visitor center. Then we were shown to 50 passenger
buses to take us to three different locations of the 98 acre hangar. The length
of the hangar can facilitate four of the over 250 foot long planes at various
stages of assembly. Disney World could fit into the hangar with 12 acres to
spare. The pieces that make up the
exterior skin of the plane are sheathed in protective light green Mylar during
production. The group was shepherded at each stop into a huge utility tunnel
about five metres high and 12 meters wide to access a large freight elevator
capable of lifting 20,000 pounds of airplane parts. Each time, the elevator hoisted everyone four
storeys to a gallery that overlooked the production floor. An explanation was
given as to the stage of production being performed below. Groups circulated on and off the balconies
every five to seven minutes. We saw the assembly of 767s, 777s and 787s. Over
3,000 workers staff three shifts per day. After the 90 minutes tour, we were
returned to the Visitor Center where the Future Flight Exhibit was located. In
the gift shop we bought some post cards to get some interior photos. The bus
ride back to the ship was about 50 minutes.
We had a
quick lunch on Deck 10 and then left the ship to explore downtown Seattle and
the waterfront. The waterfront is about 20 meters lower than the downtown
core. It was necessary to climb to the
Lenore Bridge 79 stairs to get to the Lenore Bridge to cross the railway line
and the ramp up to Western Avenue, then later we went along First Avenue. The first stop was the Klondike National Park
building, a comfortable walk along 19 blocks into the Pioneer Square area. About every third street corner had a
Starbucks coffee shop. We learned about the
history of the Klondike Gold Rush, which started in August 1896, including its
effect upon Seattle in 1897 and 1898.
There was also information on Seattle’s 1889 fire which destroyed most
of its business section which was quickly rebuilt using brick and stone rather
than wood.
On our
return route, we walked along Second Avenue so as to turned down Pike Street and
into the Pike Place Market. It is the West Coast’s oldest and largest open-air
farmers market. There were stalls with
20 stem bouquets of colourful flowers, even tulips bouquets and pink sweet pea bouquets. We saw the "Flying Fish" stall of
an assortment of fresh fish on ice. The employees
throw purchases of whole fish to each other for wrapping, giving it the name "Flying
Fish". In the market there are at
least three Starbucks coffee shops within its five street by three street area,
including the original Starbucks coffee shop which, at 3 p.m. in the afternoon,
had a long line up along the sidewalk.
We
returned to the ship in time to write up part of the blog before dinner having
logged 8.26 km. We joined Sheila and
Mildred at our table. Dinner appetizers
tonight were Vitello Tonnato (Paper thin sliced veal & arugula leaves) and
Cobb Salad. Soups were Creamy Celery
Root or Squash. Entrées were Chorizo
Linguine and Chicken Breast stuffed with banana and ham with rice and green
beans. Dessert was Biscuit Croustilano,
a dark ganache of rice crisp, white chocolate and praline topped with chocolate
mousse & Caramel sauce.
As the
ship left the dock about 9 this evening, the dark clouds that we saw gathering
at dinner released a steady rain.
The
entertainment tonight was vocalist, Jesse Hamilton, and pianist, David Howarth
Total distance walked 9.74 km
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