travel log - Seattle, Washington

We had the opportunity to visit Seattle, Washington last weekend. CB's company had their holiday party up in Eugene, Oregon, to celebrate the opening of one of their new buildings, The Oregon Federal Courthouse. Afterwards, several members of the firm rented vans and drove the five hours up to Seattle for the weekend. JK met up with them on Saturday for a weekend of wandering the streets of Seattle, some really good food and a lot of really interesting architecture.

The weather was crisp and cold, but good enough to walk all over town. We enjoyed downtown Seattle as it is really easy to get around on foot. We were able to hook up with an old friend of ours from college. We hadn't seen him since graduation over 11 years ago. He has not changed and we had a great evening of drinks and chatting to catch up.

The highlight of the trip was touring the new Seattle Public Library designed by Rem Koolhass. It is a revolutionary idea in terms of a library and takes on more of a persona of a modern museum than a functioning library. Our hotel was right next door to the library as well as being centrally located to downtown which made it easy for us to see the city in the short time that we had.

Of course, we had to trek across town to see the famous Space Needle (the icon of the Seattle skyline). It is spectacular, if not a little worse for the wear, however, I was surprised at how small it seemed in person compared to the photos I have seen.

I have attached the gallery of photos from our trip - click here and it should take you to the gallery on our smugmug photosite. The photo at the top is of the "Experience Music Project" building designed by Frank Gehry - next to the Space Needle. Let's just say that it looks A LOT better in the photos than it does in real life, although this photo is very cool showing "EMP" with the Space Needle in the distance.