Just a short walk from the smell of fresh caught seafood towards the center of the Pike Place Market is a spectacular view of the Puget Sound.  From up here, you can see the container ships come and go from the port, and the Washington State Ferries vessels leave for the other side of the sound.

The Bainbridge Island ferry is a good way to spend an afternoon.  It leaves just down the Alaskan Way from Ivar’s Acres of Clams, and for $6, you get a great view of the city, the sound, and the mountains.  Being from a landlocked state, the experience of the ferry ride was something that was fresh and new to me.

Large bodies of water amuse me.

And while Bainbridge is a bit of a resort town, similar in a few respects to a place like Aspen or Vail, the crossing itself is reason enough to take the trip.  The salt air of the sound is even more present when you’re on it, and the gulls hover around the ship, waiting for the tourists to feed them.  The wind out here is a brisk one, but it soon subsides as the vessel reaches either Eagle Harbour on Bainbridge or returns to the pier in downtown Seattle.

The cyclists are always the first ones off the ferry at Bainbridge.

Seattle is a city of neighbourhoods, too.  The people and the landscape change from one end of the city to the other, from the International District to South Lake Union.  The University District is a bit of a trip from downtown, but it’s well worth the ride out.  Visiting in early October, I was introduced to a hole-in-the-wall Thai restaurant in the U District by one of my friends. Tom Thai is cozy and great on cold days, since the fires of the kitchen range are mere feet from the counter.  You can watch the cook mix together a cocktail of sauces, add freshly chopped veggies and chicken, and cook your order right in front of you.

Mmm, tasty.  Photo by Chona Kasinger.

Over a plate of excellent, just-right-peanutty pad thai or panang curry, one can watch the denizens of the U District go about their business.  It’s cash only, but well worth the trip from downtown.  Further south is the Seattle Center, home of the famous Space Needle.

The Space Needle was built for the World’s Fair, and is one of the few remaining buildings from the expo.  It’s unmistakably Seattle; a visitor can’t help but be impressed by it the first tome they see it.  It pops out like some bizarre tree, part of a futuristic vision we dreamed would come to pass one day.  It’s prominence is only heightened by the otherworldly curves of the Experience Music Project, right nearby.

A trip on the monorail will take you directly through the EMP. A hot spot for photographers, the EMP looks like someone took a normal building and had a giant squeeze it, morphing it into a gorgeous mass of folded metal.  The concrete rails of the Seattle Center Monorail pass through the EMP like some alien form, utilitarian and plain in the midst of the strikingly different building next to them.  Every few minutes, another 60s vintage monorail car zips into the end of its line near the Space Needle.

Like something straight out of the Jetsons.

The monorail is yet another thing that is uniquely Seattle.  Like the Space Needle, the monorail is a remnant of the World’s Fair, and has been a tourist draw ever since its construction.  There have been on and off attempts over the years to use monorails on a larger scale, for mass transit purposes, but none of the proposals ever got past the design phase.  While the monorail is certainly a convenient way to get from Westlake to the Space Needle, $5 seems a bit steep for the one way mile-and-a-half trip.  It may be something best left to the tourists, but the monorail is still a reminder of the 60s, when we thought we’d all be in flying cars by now.  Alas, instead of flying cars, we have Priuses.  Tradeoffs, I suppose.

To see more of my photo work from Seattle, click here.