Flew in, drove to Lynnwood so as to be close to Boeing Everett for a noontime factory tour. Lynnwood looked like a typical affluent suburb - nothing special about what we saw while there.

While in Seattle itself, we went all over thanks to the tour we went on. We went down around Lake Union and the floating homes, and talk about overrated. Blech. Also went thru the historic ethnic districts that exist in addition to their Chinatown. There are historically Black, Italian, Nordic and Jewish areas of town, on top of anything Asian-influenced. The Jewish neighborhoods have largely yielded to Spanish speakers of various descents, but there's still some small Jewish enclaves to be had. Two of the three synagogues in town closed on dwindling memberships. As far as areas of the city, the only place we didn't visit was Mercer Island and the far side of Lake Washington. We saw the Gates house, but from across the lake. Most of the homes looked to be in good shape, but it's easily one of the most expensive cities on the West Coast given my quick read of a Seattle Times real estate page. Seattle is also the most wired city in the US in this year's recently released study - it took the title from last year's winner, ATL. You are never, no matter where in the city you live, more than one mile from a public park.

I think it's hard to judge on one visit, especially one as short as what we did. Some stereotypes (both good and bad) are alive and well there, despite the City Council's attempts at PC-ification of some things. The city insists on calling Chinatown the "International District", and the resident Chinese have strongly fought that, to include taking down and returning to the city brass commemorative plaques that the city had made using that language.

Seattle is also statistically a larger GLBT city than SFO. The uninformed of this fact (me until about 48 hours ago) would probably make the reasonable assumption that SFO is the hub of American gay culture. Apparently, Seattle is numerically superior and it is also the #1 US city for sex reassignment surgeries.

The bad economy is finally starting to hit there - it hadn't really been affected all that much until the WaMu deal, and eating out was noticeably cheaper than back East.

All of the above is only part of what my brain absorbed in the city tour - very informative and historically astute guide that we had.

Don't forget that sometime in the next 1,000 years Seattle is supposed to have a massive earthquake and volcano eruption.
:rolleyes:

So is that scheduled to happen before or after California slides off in to the Pacific? How about the tsunami that starts at the African coast and destroys the entire east coast of the US?

Sounds like a good time. We should have taken this tour you describe, when we were there. We spent 4+ days there when we went and stayed in a friend's house. We also went to Snoqualmie Falls. Glad you had a good time. I'm envious.:cool:

Sounds interesting. ^

:rolleyes::td::td::td::td::td::rolleyes:

I don't think Nostradame gave out the exact time line, but after it happens, we'll know. :p

www.letstourseattle.com - we did the morning departure, "Sights & Bites".

I looked into Snoqualmie Falls, but with the drive to/from, we couldn't fit it into such a short trip. There and Boeing Renton would be at the top of my return list.

Afternoon Box! :)

It's alive! It's alive! :p

Holy crud, UA didn't kill you.

Wow. He's still got the power of speech and typing.

Yet. He's still got a lot of Y flying left. ;)

Exactly, he's only 33% done. :D

Where are you now?

He might be using a macro or somthing for the post. He hits and holds the 2 button and it posts Good Afternoon.;) The hard part is to remember to push 2.