Today, Michael and I did the Underground Tour. We left the house at 10:00 a.m. for our 11:00 walking tour in downtown Seattle and arrived just in time… only to be shown to the waiting area where we did just that: waited.
11:15. Still waiting.
11:30. Michael got up and asked the desk what was going on. Apparently, there weren’t enough people scheduled for the 11:00 tour, so they bumped us to the 1:00 tour.
Why on earth didn’t they tell us? I failed Mind-Reading 101 miserably! Turns out they don’t do that kind of communication here—it’s a Seattle thing. No one really talks to each other. There’s even a name for it: The Seattle Freeze. In this situation, it meant we had an hour and a half to kill.
So we did what all self-proclaimed foodies do: we found a cute little café we’d never been to. It was a French café called Mirabelle by Orphée, complete with a gorgeous mural of a Parisian café and the Eiffel Tower in the background.
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Michael had the Madison chicken salad—arugula, chicken,
caramelized onion, sesame seeds, mint, and a sweet-and-sour dressing. I went
simpler: a baguette with salted French butter and Bonne Maman strawberry
preserves. Very yummy!
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Still with some time to spare, we stopped at another coffee shop across the street. Michael ordered another mocha for comparison purposes (purely scientific, of course). We honestly couldn’t say which one we liked better. They were different but equally delicious. I think I’ve officially become a mocha fan.
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We got back to the Underground Tour HQ at 12:45, just in time for… more waiting. But then the fun finally began.
Apparently, they didn’t exactly do things smart in Seattle back in the late 1800s. For starters, they built their city using measurements taken at low tide. Genius. Naturally, flooding became a problem, not to mention fires, mud churned up by horses and wagons, and sinkholes the size of swimming pools.
The holes began forming so rapidly that instead of fixing
them, they just started naming them. According to our tour guide, they often
made things worse on themselves, like using sawdust as a primary fill material.
(It was cheap. So was their judgment.)
Then there was Henry Yesler, an opportunistic machinery man who set up a mill in Seattle. Within six months of arriving, some questions came up suggesting he hadn’t exactly acquired the land legally. But did that stop him? Nope.
Henry was a scoundrel, utterly lacking in morals or ethics. So naturally they made him mayor. Back then, the mayor had the power to settle lawsuits. Henry, being Henry, would sue the city as a private citizen and then settle the lawsuit as the mayor.
By doing this, he drained the city coffers twice, and that was just during his first term! The good people of Seattle rewarded him with two more terms.
Apparently, when we do something stupid, we double down on it.
Here are a few photos Michael took during the tour:
Tour Guide
Broken Concrete
Watercloset
Steel Beams supporting the sidewalk and street above
Tourist walkway. Very humid here, with a strong smell of mold.
Discarded building materials. Some of this is sure to be cut from old growth trees.
Lighting for the underground
Before the 1889 Fire
Exit Sign
Roots growing down from street level
Please don’t lean
After the fire. Michael thinks the building in the distance was the first building constructed for the University of Washington.
Later that evening, Camille made swordfish for dinner. It
was AMAZING. I’d never had swordfish before, and now I can’t stop thinking
about it. Here’s her recipe in case you want to impress someone:
- ¼ cup
olive oil
- Juice
from 1 lemon
- Zest
from 1 lemon
- 1
tablespoon soy sauce
- 3
cloves minced garlic
- ½
teaspoon salt
- ¼ teaspoon pepper
Marinate serving-sized pieces of swordfish for at least 8
minutes but no more than 20. Grill on high for 5–6 minutes per side, or until
internal temp reaches 135–145°F.
