Big Planes and an Underworld

Today the plan was to knock off my second bucket list item.

Given we are in Seattle the obvious place for breakfast is Starbucks. They tell us there are 80 shops in Seattle so it’s not too hard to find one. The original shop is in Pike Place Market although they have stretched the truth a bit around its history. Our guides tell us that people will queue for up to three hours to get in. Doesn’t seem logical to me given there are 79 other Starbucks on the next corner.

Following this we were picked up by our guide Brain and headed out to the Boeing factory at Everett. For the first part of the trip we explored some of inner Seattle where Amazon is based. The footprint of the company is massive but some of the things they are doing are pretty cool.

The tours at Boeing are, as you would expect, like a military operation. The factory is the biggest building in the world. We got to see them building 747’s, 767’s, 777’s and the new Dreamliner 787. The place is somewhat mind blowing. At the

moment they produce 47 planes a year from this factory about to be increased to 55. The production lines take project management to a new level. Was a great tour and something I had wanted to see for a long time.

It was an interesting day for Boeing as well. We were the last tour of the day as the Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia was visiting in the afternoon. He was being hosted by Bill Gates! The prince had bought his own 747 (list price US$400m plus engines plus fitout!) and was coming for a chat. He is staying at the hotel over the road from us and it is chaos. Roads are shut, police and SWAT teams are everywhere and helicopters above us. You can imagine how excited locals are about that!

We came back into the city and took on our second tour of the day. There was a major fire here in 1889 and it wiped out 33 blocks in the middle of the city. When they rebuilt, buildings were made of brick instead of wood and were usually four stories high but the roads remained below sea level at high tide. To overcome this the city built retaining walls one story high on the side of the roads and filled them in meaning that the road was a story higher than the footpath. People had to climb a ladder on each side to cross the road. The next stage saw them build a footpath at the road level which effectively gave a two level footpath and meant there was an underground city at the original level. We went exploring this underground city.

Our guide Jim was a gem. He bought this amazing underground world to life. This is where all the speakeasy’s were during prohibition and now has bars, nightclubs and comedy clubs as well as historical relics. One of the comedy clubs we visited was where Jerry Seinfeld and Ellen got started. Much of the lighting comes from skylights in the upper footpath. Had a great time exploring and was really educational. Strongly recommend if you are visiting.

We then wandered along the waterfront and played tourists on a 4D ride showing off Washington State and took a ride on the Seattle Eye.

Dinner was at a veggie fast food joint before we headed back to the hotel to pack.

Seattle has a great buzz about it and could easily spend more time here. Moving day tomorrow as we head for London.