"C" @ ul

...that's "Seattle" in case it's hard to tell.

Randy and I spent last weekend in Seattle, the city with blue trees.

Seattle, Washington

Seattle was built under the sea level which caused a lot of problems, especially with the sewer system. Twice a day when the tides came in the flow of the sewage would flow back to the houses ...and obviously would create a mess.

In 1889 the city experienced a huge fire which destroyed 25 blocks of the city. In planning to re-build the city, Seattle decided to re-built the city above the sea level to fix the problems it had been facing up until then. And thus, they essentially abandoned the old city and built on top of it. Today, the old city remains underneath the roads and buildings of what is Seattle now. They offer tours of the underground to see what used to be.

Subseattle Tour

Going down...

Seattle Underground Tour

This was an old bar...

Subseattle

An old street - you can see where the windows used to be in the buildings. 

An old street "under Seattle"

Randy and I undergroooooound. 

Subseattle

The underground city was pretty much left as is after the fire. 

Subseattle

The top of this skylight is located along a sidewalk on the current road level. I didn't get a picture from the top, but it looks like clear tiles. The translucent tiles allow light into the underground tunnels which were still used after the fire up until the "top city" was completed.

Subseattle skylight

An Original Water System Pipe. It's kind of weird to think of all the sewage that had passed through that wooden pipe over the years it was in use. 

Subseattle Original Waterpipe

And in the gift shop of the underground tour, we found this... because who doesn't want to look and feel Canadian?!

Canadian, Eh?!

This UUUGLY parking structure is called "The Sinking Ship"

Sinking Ship Parking Garage

Experience Music Project

EMP

From under the ground, we traveled 184m above the ground, to the top of the Seattle Space Needle. 

Seattle Space Needle

And the view was awesome :) We were at the Space Needle just around sunset.

Top of the Seattle Space Needle

Seattle :)

Top of the Seattle Space Needle

Randy and I with Seattle in the back

Top of the Seattle Space Needle

I do apologize to my dear parents for the late blog post. I've been busy going to the water park...

Driving back from the waterpark

And curling...

In the lounge after Curling with CEI

I love you both very much and thank goodness for skype. Technology these days - I was video chatting with my parents who are 4000km away and I took a photograph on my new smartphone and emailed myself the picture from my smart phone onto the computer in which I am typing on now and I will post this message on a blog for my parents 4000km to see.

And yet despite all this amazing technology (magic really) we still get frustrated when the internet connection isn't perfectly perfect and my father laughs at me when my words and mouth are not in sync while skyping.

I love you both <3