Just got back from a short visit to Seattle. Stayed at the fabulous Edgewater Hotel, lodging for many a rock star in its day, and home of the infamous Mud Shark Incident, immortalized in the Led Zeppelin book and many a Frank Zappa performance.
Walked over the skylights to the Seattle Underground , though I didn’t take the tour this time, and spent two days working in the historic Smith Tower, at one time the 4th tallest building in the world, and currently the only building remaining on the West Coast with manually-operated elevators.
I remember the Seattle Underground figuring prominently in either one of the TV movies or the series “The Night Stalker,” the original one with Darrin McGavin. I’m definitely going to set aside some time to take the tour next time I’m up there, as this sort of secret architectural history appeals to me. The sidewalks in this area (Pioneer Square, I beleive) have little purple inlays that happen to be glass illuminating the Underground below. Access to the underground is through unmarked doors on the street.
I was playing tonight with the site 43places.com . This site is pretty good at ferreting out cool places to go in Seattle, and I assume other cities. My favorite part of Seattle so far is Belltown, and there’s a lot of information about it on the site. I’m also looking at the Ace Hotel in Belltown, which sounds like a fairly cool place to stay in the middle of things.