Jumping back a day…..Before heading out to Alaska’s inside passage we spend an evening and morning in Seattle at a really nice old-world style hotel near the Space Needle.
A couple of evening shots around the hotel.. (sorry about the blue tint I forgot to reset the color balance!) Seattle is a rather hilly town as you can see from these shots, but the area around Seattle Central is really nice, a quiet, pleasant neighborhood with a mix of small businesses (lots of bars!) and residential areas.
Since the wall of the building was so close to the hotel exterior they painted the adjoining building to add interest to the view out the rear hotel windows…
I spend the morning wondering around the neighborhood before we walked over to the Space Needle
A wall on the side of a music store.
and the front of it
a few detail shots of the window displays
and for my friend Devo, Devo….
more of the hood around the hotel
A cool church
Cobblestone streets and nice homes…
The Needle from afar…
more homes and stuff
saw some nice old vehicles in the hood as well….
a café’d Honda 750 (see it even has a kick-starter! (remember those????))
another nice old car…An Impala perhaps???
Looking around from the center of an intersections in all four compass points, did I mention Seattle is rather hilly in places???/
another nice church..
more homes and buildings…
a number of the apartment buildings had nice little front courts such as this one….
then I headed back to the hotel and Jeanne and I walked down to the park area around the Space Needle…
Da needle
some artwork in the park…
there were a number of nice flower beds scattered around..
a rainbow trapped in a sculpture in a small lower courtyard in the park.
some views from the top of the needle…in panorama form…
Downtown Seattle...
link to the full pano viewer here….
http://roadrunes.com/photo/main.php?g2_view=panorama.Panorama&g2_itemId=69832
and another wider view including the harbor area..
and link to the full pano viewer here…
http://roadrunes.com/photo/main.php?g2_view=panorama.Panorama&g2_itemId=69836
then it was time to walk back to the hotel, grab our gear and head to the ship….
A few panos of the Seattle shore as we prepared to set sail, taken from the top deck of liner…. First is the left half of a series of 6 shots then the right 6 and finally all put together … the two didn’t quite join up right so it’s a bit of fudge in the center, just pretend you don’t see it
the pano viewer here
http://roadrunes.com/photo/main.php?g2_view=panorama.Panorama&g2_itemId=69840
the right half
and the full size….
http://roadrunes.com/photo/main.php?g2_view=panorama.Panorama&g2_itemId=69844
and finally the two put together
and full size pano viewer
http://roadrunes.com/photo/main.php?g2_view=panorama.Panorama&g2_itemId=69848
Oh and I have to include some shots of our first nights dinner when we ate at the Steak House on board ship..
Appetizers..
and tinie-tiny hamburger….
Lobsta ‘n steak, Oh yeah….
Next up day two in the open sea where we did see some whales and dauphins prior to getting to the inside passage I even saw one breach, quite spectacular, no shot though, sigh!
RM