surrounded by water in seattle

before i picked up the rental dune buggy and headed toward portland via jimi's gravesite, i spent a few days in seattle. my journey began with a few days stay at the illustrious green tortoise hostel, within a few blocks of the pike place market.



lots of gifties and daily treats for the locals.



and naturally, plenty of amazing seafood, fresh from the mesmerizing waters outside.



those crab legs were as long as my arm. seriously.

seattle really is a beautiful city, no doubt about it. arts and free thought abound. i could be happy in a place like that.

i'd taken a bus tour to get a lay of the land and we covered quite a bit of ground throughout seattle and the city's surrounding areas. early in the ride, i caught the skyline from this vantage point:



at the end of the tour, i jumped off at a major touristy junction, an odd wonderland of seattle's heavy-hitting "must sees".

here's a fierce museum designed by frank gehry, the experience music project. major exhibits on seattle's son, james marshall hendrix, and bob dylan nestled in between serious interactive studios that allowed you to create and mix live music.

mystical exterior:



but a sampling of the interior (this guitar tree was about 30 feet tall):



i cannot wait to get lost in the folds of that bohemoth music castle again.

the emp sits in the shadows of seattle's friendliest skyscraper, the space needle.



i love that this thing remains as an homage to the space age visions of the 60s. from this vantage point, it really is magnificent to look upward.

here's the view that $13 bought me. it took about 7 seconds to zip up to the top, but worth it to see the full circle vision of this city.