Sleepyhead in Seattle

I visited Seattle this weekend. Though this city has no famous landmark like Golden Gate Bridge or Statue of Liberty, it is beautiful in its own way.. It is surrounded by lakes and Pacific Ocean bay and has very scenic vistas.. I saw the usual must-see places like the Market place, Lake Washington, Lake Union, the waterfront of the Elliot Bay, Space Needle, Microsoft, Bridges, Waterfalls, Hills. Other than the usual places, I saw some really interesting places which I had never thought of seeing. The following were the interesting places which one must not miss when visiting the city:

• Locks:

  This was the most interesting place I had a chance to see. Sea and freshwater lakes merge together at a point in Seattle and to prevent Freshwater from flowing into the salty ocean, they built dams. As a result, water level in the freshwater lakes is higher than the sea water level. If a ship/boat wants to leave the sea and enter the freshwater or vice versa, they have something called “Locks” wherein the boats are raised or lowered according to the water level (similar to elevator) and then left to sail. I had never heard of such things in my life and we were lucky to see a set of boats crossing the locks.

Underground City:

This was another interesting place. It seems in the past, since the city was at the sea level, tides would come in and trouble people. So, they came up with the idea of raising the entire city by 1 floor. This meant that the ground floor with shops and hotels would be below the ground level. People had to take stairs and get down to the underground city in order to do shopping. The first floor would be at the street level. It is also supposed to be one of the most haunted places on Earth.

• Boeing Factory:

This is supposedly the World’s largest building. It has to be since it is the assembly plant of the largest aircrafts that are in use. Boeing 747 being the most widely used intercontinental airplane and 737 being the most widely used intracontinental plane. The building is as huge as a 10 storey building and we were able to see the new 787s which will be soon out (cost is above 100 million $ 😀 ). 787 has very cool features like adjustment of window opacity (from 0% to 100%) and many more. We were able to see an assembled Air India plane too which was ready for testing. Another amazing thing to hear was that though a plane has a million parts, they assemble it in 3 days to 18 days 😮 I got all my doubts clarified like this question:”Why do they paint only the tail and not the entire body with cool colors?”

A: Paint makes its body heavy and to keep it light only the tail is painted. The tail is first painted and then fixed to the body

• Evergreen Floating point bridge (SR 520):

  This is the longest floating bridge in the world. This bridge is built across Lake Washington. I just got a chance to drive across the bridge and the view was just too spectacular. I cannot explain the feeling in words. It was way too awesome. d

  

• First Starbucks Shop:

  Starbucks was started in Seattle and the first shop still exists 🙂 It is the biggest coffee chain in the world.

P.S: I have more than 5000 hits now..yayyy 🙂