After our spell of people watching at the Space Needle, and talking about eugenics, we walked back to the parking garage where I our car was parked. It turned out to be the parking garage of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. The bright new office building was handsome and in splendid taste for the area.
From there we drove to the hotel and checked in---the Silver Cloud Inn at Lake Union. The young woman who checked me, very contractive of body, barely said three sentences to me the entire room. It felt a bit off. But the room was decent.
It turned out to have TCM---quite a treat. But the first night I mostly watched college football games while Red studied.
In the morning we had brunch at the splendid 14 Carrot Restaurant in Eastlake then gave ourselves a tour of the neighborhoods of north Seattle, from the University westward past Green Lake. We stopped for a good long while at the park on the sound at the foot of the hill in Ballard and watched the Olympics, where were glorious and already snow capped. The sky was brilliant blue except for a few banks of cirrus and cirrostratus on the horizon. Nearby the crew of a sailboat had the Seahawks game on the radio. We stood on the dock, leaning against the wooden railing as boats came by the jetty, in and out of the Sound.
After lingering there as long as we could indulge, we drove south across the canal and then got purposefully lost on the back streets of Queen Anne Hill. After many fun twists and turns we finally came down the steep hill towards Mercer Street at the edge of Downtown.
As we cruised through Belltown, heading towards the Pike Street Market, I told Red to find a place to park. I took us a while to find a garage. We had to circle around twice.
But it was worth it, the effort. I had a pilgrimage to make.
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