UPDATED: January 12, 2021 This is the ninth of a series of posts dealing my fourth
trip to Seattle and first of two trips that year. I’ve made minor corrections
to these reports. Also, I’ve added additional thoughts with the hindsight of
five years later or to add further clarification; I use “NOW” to denote such
cases.
Can't seem to find my Not for Tourists guide or my less worn
itinerary/location list. May have put in
my locker in error. One challenge is the
lockers are in the rooms so it's hard to find times when no one is sleeping to
do a thorough search.
I should have done Smith Tower and Columbia Center in the
last couple days because the weather's turning bad again and is expected to
remain bad during the trip. Will still
visit and take whatever pics I can.
Today is Tacoma.
Still haven't heard from my friend there (waves to [name edited out])
but I've provided notes for the easier to predict part of the day so she may
intercept me.
[NOW: I didn’t end up meeting my friend. This was the first
of two morning posts that day.]
Found the missing stuff when I returned to my locker to grab
my coat and long sleeved pants due to weather.
[NOW: The above was the second morning post that day; the
rest I wrote in the evening.]
For some reason I was pretty sleepy during the bus ride to
Tacoma. Luckily the Greyhound next door to the Tacoma Dome Station (where the
bus arrives at Tacoma) had an energy drink for 50c. I also grabbed a Pierce
Transit schedule from a bus store before taking a bus from the station to Port
Defiance Park.
[NOW: I rode one of the Sound Transit buses there. All buses before returning to Seattle were Pierce Transit.]
As it turns out, getting to the zoo within the park is quite
hard and I never did figure out the best route. The zoo was okay but a lot
smaller than Woodland Park Zoo. It does have an aquarium in it and the baby
arctic fox is extremely cute.
My friend never showed ([message to friend edited out]).
I missed the bus I wanted to take downtown trying to find the
stop, so took a different bus to the mall instead, since I planned to visit
there eventually anyway. I visited the Best Buy and then crossed the street
from Tacoma Mall Station to Tacoma Mall proper.
I took some pictures but a security guard had a problem with
that and made me delete the ones in the mall I had taken. The guard, obviously
the main goodwill ambassador of the tourism industry then asked me to leave. He
finally relented when I insisted I hadn't know it was against the rules and
promised not to take any more pics inside the mall, but he told me if he caught
me taking any more pics inside the mall he would treat me as a trespasser. I
visited FYE and Suncoast (probably the same business under a different name
given they're packaging's so similar), buying DVDs at the latter place.. I got
some memory cards at OfficeMax just outside the mall (think I'm set now), then
crossed the street (opposite direction of Tacoma Mall station) and visited Half
Price Books. I returned to the mall, grabbed a lunch at McDonald's, then took a
bus to near downtown.
[NOW: Suncoast, OfficeMax, and that McDonald's are now closed.]
I visited King's Books and asked about the cat I recalled
from the last visit. It was just hidden and they let me pet the even-tempered
cat. Apparently it was at death's door at one point and then made a full
recovery. I tried to find a video store but apparently got the location just
slightly off.
[NOW: That video store, Stadium Video is now closed.]
I still had a transfer so decided on the spur of the moment
before going to downtown proper to check out a row of 6th Ave shops. I visited
Blockbuster, Backstage Video (gone), Wiley's Golden Oldies, Drastic Plastic Records,
another record shop called Hi-Fidelity or something like that, Turntable
Records, Dark Tower Comics.
[NOW: Blockbuster and Wiley's Golden Oldies are now closed. The store I couldn't remember the name of is probably Hi-Voltage Records. Dark Tower Comics might be Tacoma Games now but unable to confirm.]
Just as my transfer was expiring I managed to get a bus
back to where I had got on. I visited Mother Records (gone), and then walked through
the University of Washington. I visited Buzzard CD's (bought Who Killed the Electric
Car, which I lent out another copy but don't know to whom and never got back),
then walked through the University again and bought a Coke at the bookstore.
[NOW: Buzzard’s folded into Stadium
Video before both closed.]
I walked along the Bridge of Glass leading to the Museum of
Glass. I'm pretty sure the museum was closed today and didn't feel like
visiting, but the bridge, while not glass itself, has a row of nice displays
such as glass jugs and the like. I hope there's some hidden security because it
has to be tempting to thieves crossing the bridge.
I took the free Tacoma Link streetcar back to Tacoma Dome
Station, visited Tacoma Book Center (bought a graphic novel), tried to visit
the Tacoma Dome (being a stadium it was closed), then returned to the station
and took a bus back to downtown Seattle.
[NOW: The Tacoma Link streetcar, now Line T, and the bus to Seattle are Sound Transit.]
I bought a couple DVDs and a book at Borders, then rode the
trolley to South Lake Union, got off, took some pics and then when it was ready
to return took it back (I used a bus transfer for this). I did this so i could
say I rode the trolley all the way.
[NOW: Borders is now completely defunct. The trolley is King County Metro Transit.]
Most of the day it was actually sunny but now it was
pouring. I bought some food at McDonald's to go including a unique new flavoured
ice tea, I ate at the hostel. Right outside the hostel they've now dug up the
road for repaving.
I bought a magazine at Pike Place News and then returned to
the hostel. While it was only 8:30 it was pouring rain so instead of going for
a final walk, I reorganized my locker, which should save me some time.
I typed out a draft of this e-mail and copied it, but then
the network on one row of computers crashed and still didn't work, so I had to
retype this on another computer, going back and forth from the old computer so
see what I had written (you can't save the text anywhere even if you've pasted
it to another doc). So if there's a lot of typos it's because I'm in a hurry to
retype the whole $%& * message.
[NOW: I edited out all the typos (I hope) before pasting into my
blog.]
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