Downtown Seattle is very compact.
When I wanted to see the Amazon Sophia, I could meet by chance when I walked for about five minutes from the hotel, and the shopping district in the center of Seattle is about five minutes away, also Pike Place Market is about ten minutes away. The streets were calm, and perhaps because there were so many Asians, I was able to easily adjust to Seattle as if it were not my first time in the city.
Beneath the Streets
Three of us, my husband, his son and I, walked around the cold, rainy city, and entered a cafe called “Anchorhead” to decide what to do next and to warm up.
↓See below the story before the cafe↓
For about an hour, we each spent time with our iPhones.
Tomoki was killing time on Instagram, and we were searching for activities that would not be too cold even in the rain.
Then I remembered that the “Seattle Underground Tour” was on the list of sightseeing spots that Jeremy’s mom had sent us the day before.
We thought we didn’t have to worry about the rain and it would be warmer than outside, so we signed up for the 2:30 p.m. tour online.
It takes about 10 minutes on foot from the cafe (Pike Place store) where we are resting to the meeting place of the tour.
There are several similar tours available, but we joined the “Beneath the Streets” tour, which had just the right time slot. The tour was at 2:30 on a Wednesday afternoon, and it seemed to be popular with 13 participants, close to the maximum number of 14. We were first asked where we came from, and everyone was a tourist from within the U.S., including Florida, Nevada, Washington DC, Pennsylvania, etc. We were the only two participants from overseas.
↓Refer to the articles below for more detail of the tour. (in Japanese, though)↓
I thought we were going to walk around the underground passages, but we only stopped at a couple of underground places, and the tour was basically a walk above ground while the guide explained the history of the city to us.
Ultimately, it turned out to be a “tour in the cold and rain”☔😂
It was an interesting experience to learn that until a little over 100 years ago, the Pioneer Square area of Seattle was above ground level at what is now the basement level, and to get a glimpse of the old streets left behind underground.
And again the cafe
I’m not particularly a coffee lover, but it was getting cold again, so we took a break at a cafe (Cafe Umbria) after the tour.
“Why did the café culture flourish in Seattle?”
I think I have found the answer through my own experience.
Later, I searched the Internet and found that,
Seattle is famous for its rainy days.
In Seattle, the culture of using umbrellas is not very popular. Even though the climate is mild, the rain in winter is still unbearable.Due to such circumstances, there is a theory that the number of cafes has increased for using it to keep warm and shelter from the rain, and coffee culture flourished.
I’ve heard that Seattle is the city with the most cafes in the U.S., and it’s true that every time I walk 300-400 meters in the city, I see one café signboard after another.
https://www.tenpo.biz/tentsu/consumer/cate_food/2018-02-02-100000
That’s right!
I completely sympathized. I voted for that theory.
We were planning to have an early dinner at a restaurant called “The Crab Pot Seattle” near the cafe, but to our surprise, the cafe closed at 4pm. We were told that the shop was closed, but it was too early for dinner at 4pm, so we decided to go back to the hotel.
And since it was too cold to go out again for dinner, we decided to eat at an Italian restaurant in the hotel.
It’s been a long time since we’ve had a family gathering, so the place didn’t particularly matter where we were, and we had a great time talking about all kinds of things.
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