So, I celebrated my one year anniversary of moving to Seattle. This year has gone fast.
Ok, so I didn't actually "celebrate" a one year anniversary... it just happened that Facebook told me what I was doing a year ago by reposting a picture of me on the day I arrived in Seattle, and I went "huh, I guess I've been here a whole year now", and it just happened that on that day I was touring downtown Seattle with my friends this year. So it was an accidental full circle occasion.
But still- a whole year!
Anywho, we began our tour de downtown with the Underground Tour. We went for the basic, well known Bill Speidel Underground Tour. Tours take place in the Pioneer Square neighborhood (see our great view of the Smith Tower below- once the tallest building west of the Mississippi, now rather small in comparison to others).
Pioneer Square is Seattle's "first neighborhood", so the architecture is unique to downtown and it's quaint and fun to wander around.
So we started our tour where all the tours begin. The tour was not quite what I expected. My expectation was that we were going to walk these secret underground streets of old Seattle with storefronts that have been untouched for years. So really, I had no idea what the Underground Tour was all about.
Seattle has got tourism DOWN. They are a well oiled tourist machine. So once we bought our tickets, we got wrist bands, and were directed to wait directly outside out the front door until our tour time (we could get in early if we bought something at their little cafe, but I don't know that it's worth the perk... we didn't do it).
Once our tour time came (on the DOT), our tour guide walked out the door and told us all to enter this room.
We sat on benches as our tour guide gave us some Seattle history. First, our tour guide was fantastic and completely fulfilled the Seattle hipster stereotype with his above the knee chino shorts, nose ring, and baseball cap. He was knowledgeable, entertaining, and had obviously done this tour many times before. He gave us some history (and again, they are on a schedule, so the minute it's time to go, we all move!) and then led us out to the street.
We walked across the street and down into the basement of a building. This was where I learned that my expectations were all wrong. We weren't walking the underground streets of Seattle. We entered a building through a door at street level, but it was actually the second level window of the building. The "underground" part is actually that the first stories of these buildings are now underground, essentially being "basements" of sorts. So between the city being very hilly and built on sand, there was a lot of... sewage...conversation that helped to create the city being so much higher today. Parts of the buildings are untouched, but also parts are artifacts and things that have been placed places- not for effect but more as "we don't know what to do with this, it will just stay here".
It is a very strange and unique part of Seattle history.
It is really odd to think that these buildings look normal outside, but actually have an entire floor that has been buried underground.
One of my favorite parts was the "skylights". On the streets of Seattle, they look like artistic glass sidewalk pieces, but underneath you realize they that are old skylights. People walk around above you, and plants are growing underneath.
It was really interesting. It was nothing like what I thought we were going to do, but I ended up learning a lot about the city and it's history.
There are other tours that you can do through this company- one of them being an underground "Sub Seattle" tour and others that I assume are all underground as well. So maybe one of those shows what I thought we were going to be doing. I'll have to try them all sometime!
Either way I learned a lot and it made for a great morning.
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