SEATTLED IN NOW

Enjoying Seattle, we are staying in a small modern condo, 5 blocks north of downtown in Belltown. This is a nice area with a distinctly city village atmosphere. The streets are tree lined with restaurants & cafes, fairly clean & tidy with a view down to Puget Sound, also about 5 blocks away. We have spent the last couple days wandering around town, doing the usual touristy stuff. Bainbridge Island is just off the coast & you can get a ferry to visit. Seattle has an interesting history of boom & bust and burnt to the ground in the 1800's. Cabinet makers set it on fire, which spread to the liquor warehouses and the hardware, which stored ammo & gunpowder. The fire brigade tried to make a fire break by blowing up houses. You can just imagine the result with, dynamite going off, bullets firing off and all the kindling resulting from making the fire break. Anyway when it all cooled down they told the property owners not to rebuild until that had raised the level of the land by spreading the earth from nearby hills. The owners couldn't wait for that & started to rebuild. The city said make the buildings from brick/stone and allow for the ground to be raised 1 to 2 stories by land fill, with street doors set accordingly. They then built brick wall in front of the buildings to contain the fill. Money run out and the front doors could only be reached by ladder to the shops & offices. Finally they finished the streets with either fill or cover to the level it is. We did a tour of the subterranean part which has the old ground floors, now underground below the streets. There are apparently ghosts from all the drunks that fell into the open holes before work was completed. Did I manage to capture any on film? Ask Des to look. Been out and about on the public transit system. Plenty of buses running all over the city, only a dollar to ride, which gives you any number of trips in about 3 hours. Excellent. Been dukwing through town and out onto the water. The Amazon offices here are amazing. Enjoyed musical fountains by space needle. Would like to visit Boeing plant, but no time. Selfies gone to pot again.