The ship sailed into the Seattle harbor early in the morning.

Up early as well, we ate breakfast, before final checking of the stateroom, and then disembarked about 9 AM.

Kay had scheduled us for a “Best of Seattle” bus tour, and so it was from the ship and onto the bus. Despite a poor guide, we saw the key city places, including the baseball and football stadiums, the huge Boeing campus, one of the first Costco stores, and of course, the “Space Needle” and the famous “Farmers Market.”

The Space Needle is one of the most recognizable landmarks in the world and is a treasured Seattle icon. Built for the 1962 World’s Fair—the Century 21 Exposition whose theme was “The Age of Space”—the tower’s futuristic design was inspired by the idea that the fair needed a structure to symbolize humanity’s Space Age aspirations. Since its grand opening on April 21, 1962, the landmark continues to symbolize the innovative and forward-thinking spirit of Seattle. Located at Seattle Center, the Space Needle stands at 605’ tall and is one of the most photographed structures in the world. The tower’s 520’ saucer-shaped “top house” offers visitors Seattle’s only 360-degree indoor and outdoor panoramic views of downtown, Mount Rainier, Puget Sound, and the Cascades and Olympic mountain ranges.

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The Pike Place Market is Seattle’s original Farmers Market. At the turn of the century, Seattle was a rough and tumble place and a rapidly growing city. As the population of gold rushers, loggers, fishermen, shipbuilders and merchants grew, so did the demand for produce and goods from the city’s neighboring farms. In the decade of 1890-1900, Seattle’s population nearly doubled, growing from 42,000 to 80,000 citizens. Farmers brought their vegetables, fruit, milk, dairy, eggs and meat to the city by horse drawn wagons and by ferry from the nearby islands. The goods were purchases by wholesalers, who sold the goods at a commission at warehouses on Western Ave. In this system, farmers occasionally made a profit but increasingly only broke even or lost money. In 1906-1907, the price of produce—onions namely—soared, leaving the farmers none the richer and the citizens angry over the price gouging. The uproar led one local official to try to find a solution. In the summer of 1907, Seattle City Councilman Thomas Revelle proposed the city create a public market place where farmers and consumers could meet directly to sell and buy goods and thereby sidelining the wholesalers. On the public market’s first day, August 17, 1907, crowds of shoppers seeking fresh produce and bargains descended upon the new marketplace. The first farmer sold out of produce within minutes. Within a week, 70 wagons were gathering daily to sell along the newly named Pike Place, a wooden roadway that connected First St. to Western Ave.

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From Pike Place Market, we were delivered to the airport for a 10-h0ur wait to catch the “red eye” flight to DFW, and the to Little Rock. As luck would have it, the wing of the airport housing our gate was without internet, so we played hopscotch looking for internet the rest of the evening until our near midnight flight.