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British Invasion -- Cygnia Style!


Cygnia

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On 1/22/2023 at 10:47 AM, Cygnia said:

Since it'll be close to Doctor Who's 60th anniversary, will anything be open celebrating it?

To commemorate Doctor Who's 60th anniversary, I suggest visiting your local quarry.

 

OK, visiting the Pacific Northwest instead? When you're in Seattle, I recommend the University of Washington. Specifically, Suzallo Library. It has a splendid Collegiate Gothic facade. Inside, be sure to go up the grand staircase to the Reading Room. It's like the Great Hall at Hogwarts, only minus the CGI and the students are older. I also like the stained glass windows honoring the pioneers of printing, which shows you where my mind's at. The main desk is on the ground floor of a newer part of the library, an immense room featuring an art installation of carved ravens and the motto, "Raven Brings Light to the House of Stories," both in English and one of the local Indigenous languages for which linguists had to invent new characters (lots of backward question marks, IIRC).

 

Also swing by the Quad nearby, if you want more Collegiate Gothic. If you arrive at the correct two weeks of the year, all the Japanese cherries will be in bloom. One of the buildings on the south campus has a Foucault pendulum. Or from Red Square, in front of Suzallo, you can look south to a fine view of Drumheller Fountain -- and beyond it, if the weather's clear, a perfectly framed Mount Rainier.

 

Elsewhere in Seattle, it's been way too long since I visited the Seattle Center. The Space Needle is the most famous attraction, but I prefer the Science Center. The city also holds the Experience Music Project and, next door, the Science Fiction Museum. The Underground Seattle tour is... well, not actually that spectacular, but but the history is interesting and you can glean material for setting adventures in Seattle. All this below ground space, much of it neglected, ready for supervillains, vampires, or other interesting people to occupy!

 

As a resident of Pierce rather than King County, though, I am obliged by statute to put in a good word for Tacoma. The old Union Station downtown is another architectural gem, its form echoed by the newer Washington State History Museum. Nearby is the Museum of Glass. Tacoma's most celebrated artist, Dale Chihuly, brought glass art to the city, so it's a big deal for the locals. The museum includes a "hot shop" where you can watch local artists and artisans doing glassblowing and such. The Point Defiance Zoo is available if you like animals.

 

Don't worry, the infamous "Tacoma Aroma" is long gone since the pulp mill shut down. And the demise of the Asarco Smelter means Tacoma is no more toxic than any other metropolis.

 

I recommedn Atlas Obscura or the book Weird Washington to help you find the region's stranger attractions. For instance, as you drive up I-5 you might catch a glimpse of Gospodor's Monument Park (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gospodor_Monument_Park).

 

Dean Shomshak

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Things in Seattle you are unlikely to encounter elsewhere...

  • Space Needle and other pieces of the Seattle Center.  These include the Pacific Science Center, Chihuly Garden & Glass, Museum of Pop Culture, and a number of venues for time-variable exhibits/shows/etc.  There's a monorail between the Center and Westlake Center (kind of the north edge of downtown), and while that monorail was futuristic and cool when it was put in for the 1962 World's Fair, it's less remarkable now (but it is a way of getting between downtown and the Center).
  • Museum of Flight, down at Boeing Field, well south of downtown.  If you're interested in aviation at all, easy to blow half a day there.
  • Just south of downtown, abutting the two big stadiums (Lumen Field for NFL and MLS; T-Mobile Park for MLB) and extending eastward from them, is the International District, including Chinatown, Japantown, and Little Saigon.  For tourists,: Restaurants.  Some cultural museums.  Asian ethic stores.
  • Seattle Aquarium, on the waterfront near downtown.  Focus is on local creatures.  Includes an underwater dome where you can sit for extended time watching the fish and other critters (once I watched an abalone flee for its life from a sun star across the sandy bottom for about 20 minutes before the kids got bored and we had to move on). 
  • There are other attractions on the waterfront within walking distance; a big ferris wheel is among them.  That's new enough I haven't ridden it.
  • Between the south end of downtown and the waterfront is Pioneer Square, perhaps the oldest part of the city, mentioned by DShomshak above.  The Yukon gold rush was important in the early history of the city.
  • In the middle of downtown is the Seattle Art Museum.  Dunno what you think about art; if that's on your list of things you want to see, then there are several others I can mention.
  • Between the north end of downtown and the waterfront is Pike Place Market, notorious elsewhere for fish being thrown.  Other stuff there as well.
  • If the weather is good, take the Washington State Ferry (the terminal is at the south end of the waterfront) out to Bainbridge Island, as a pedestrian, and back.  It's about $10 per person westbound out of Seattle, no charge coming back.  If the weather's good, nice view in each direction, though approaching the city by water is IMO the most impressive part.
  • Washington Park arboretum is large and free. At the north end it abuts Lake Washington and you can walk on boardwalks along the marsh areas and see wildlife.  At the south end is a large Japanese Garden that isn't part of the park (which means there's an entrance fee), but is quite impressive in scale and flavor.
  • On the south edge of Lake Union (north of downtown) is MOHAI, the Museum of History and Industry, which abuts the Wooden Boat Center.  MOHAI moved to that location only 10-15 years back; I haven't visited it in its current location.  FWIW, there is regularly scheduled floatplane service that goes out of Lake Union, and watching those planes take off and land is interesting for a while if you haven't seen it before.
  • University of Washington campus is very large, and DShomshak above mentioned the Suzzalo Library, the Quad, Red Square and Rainier Vista and other places.  He mentioned the building with a Foucault pendulum in it; it's one section of the Physics-Astronomy Building (back in the 1990s I worked there).  The Burke Museum is at the northwest corner of campus and has lots of good stuff on local natural history and the pre-colonial peoples and their society.  Across the street to the east of the Burke is the old Jacobsen Observatory, which sometimes has telescope viewing with the old 6-inch refractor in the evenings (that was my work-study job in my last two years of college there at UW in the 1970s).  Almost at the diametrically opposite corner of campus from the Burke, behind Husky Stadium, is a canoe house where you can rent a canoe and go paddling across the Montlake Cut and get to the watery areas of the north end of the Arboretum mentioned above.  Strictly a nice sunny day thing to do, and it was considered a romantic outing with a sweetie back before I got married.
  • The Ballard Locks (officially the Hiram Chittenden Locks) connect the (fresh water) Lake Union with the (salt water) Puget Sound.  There are gardens adjacent to the Locks on the north side; on the south side of the Locks is a fish ladder, and depending on the time of year there are salmon runs through that.  On a summer weekend there's a lot of boats that pass through the Locks, and if that's not something you've seen before you can spend a hour or two watching that.
  • Woodland Park Zoo is a bit further north.  When my kids were young, we went there frequently, but once they were on the verge of teens we had other things to do, so I haven't been there in 15 years or so, and I know things have changed there.
  • There are beaches in the city, but Puget Sound like the North Pacific in these latitudes is cold water.  Walking on the beach is pleasant, but nobody swims at them.

Everything in the list above is in Seattle proper, and everything on that list other than the Museum of Flight is downtown or north of it.  This betrays my bias toward convenient things for me (I live almost at the north city limits).  There's certainly stuff in the south half of the city and in the area south of Seattle and north of Tacoma as well; I just don't go that way much.

 

North of Seattle I tend to go Port Townsend (on the other side of Puget Sound), where there's an old US Coastal Artillery fort that is in good shape (it's now a state park) though the guns were removed a century ago, and at Anacortes is the terminal that goes out to the San Juan Islands if you fancy that sort of thing.

 

East of the Cascades has got completely different landforms, ecology, and rather lower population density that Seattle, but stuff is also more spread out, so you're talking more hours in the car if you go over there.  Grand Coulee Dam (and other dams on the Columbia and Snake rivers) and the nearby Dry Falls; Hanford Atomic Works (you can visit the old B Reactor now); Palouse Falls; several National Wildlife Refuges; the Channeled Scablands; the immense Columbia River Basalt Group.  The lower Yakima Valley is a major and high-quality wine-producing area if you are into upscale wines.

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  • 2 weeks later...

These are some of my favorite sites in Vancouver. All of them are free or inexpensive.

 

Stanley Park, a huge lush public park right next to downtown Vancouver, on a peninsula jutting into Burrard Inlet and English Bay. Also the site of the renowned Vancouver Aquarium.

 

Gastown, reconstruction of the old original settlement of Vancouver into a tourist site of shops and boutiques, full of Victorian architecture, a big steam-powered clock, a wax museum, and a statue of its founder, "Gassy Jack" Deighton, standing on a big keg of the booze that was his main business.

 

Victoria Park, a gorgeous large green space planted within and up the sides of an old stone quarry. Also contains the Bloedel Conservatory, a big geodesic glass dome greenhouse with exotic tropical vegetation and free-flying birds.

 

Vancouver Central Library, a spectacular multi-story public library in downtown Vancouver. If you've seen Arnold Schwarzenneger's movie The Sixth Day, that's where the climax was filmed.

 

Vancouver's Chinatown is the largest in Canada, famous for its restaurants and stores, as well as the elegant Dr. Sun Yat-sen Classical Chinese Garden.

 

North Vancouver, across the Burrard Inlet from Vancouver, holds a couple of treasures. The closest is the Grouse Mountain Skyride, North America's longest cable car, which carries you over scenic terrain to Vancouver's closest peak. Grouse Mountain is a ski lodge in winter, but all year offers a magnificent view of downtown Vancouver, Stanley Park, and the Pacific Ocean. If you aren't driving I recommend taking the spacious ferry across the Inlet, called "the SeaBus." The bridges can get very crowded.

 

Also in North Vancouver, about 45 minutes' drive from Vancouver Airport (unless you try during rush hours), is Capilano Suspension Bridge Park. It's pricier than the others above, but worth it. Besides its famous 450-foot suspension bridge over the Capilano River, the park features elevated walking paths suspended between enormous trees, and along the face (not the top) of cliffs overlooking the river. Fantastically decorated with lights for the Christmas-New Year season.

 

You can Search for images of all of these.

 

Public transportation includes buses and trolleys, as well as surface, below ground, and elevated automated trains. Coverage is fairly extensive. There's a direct train line from the airport to downtown Vancouver.

 

One word of warning: Lodging and food in Vancouver gets pretty expensive.

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On 1/23/2023 at 3:40 PM, Cygnia said:

Well...

 

...

 

...

 

...after sending the hubby DT's very fine advice, he now is suggesting we go to Portland/Seattle/Vancouver instead.  

 

I can only assume he is terrified of Death Tribble. ;)

What a shame I missed this, I could have done my second HeroBoards personal tour of the Palace of Westminster.

Cardiff is within striking distance of London which is where Dr Who and Torchwood were filmed.  In Scotland you could have hit Edinburgh Castle with a ghost walk.  Come back down via York - home of the Vikings.  Head out from there to Whitby (Dracula) and the Holy Isle.

 

Always something you can do in the future. 

 

Doc


 

 

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We went from Anacortes WA to Victoria BC via the Black Ball Ferry last September.  Canada had at the time some requirements about proof of vaccination, whihc you can get to via Canadian gov't sites, and they required a passport.  Pretty standard stuff for international borders.  I have not paid attention to details since then.

 

Getting back into the US just takes a passport.  (We crossed back into the US at I-5 on the mainland, having taken the BC Ferry from Vancouver Island to Tsawassen on the mainland.)

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On 2/7/2023 at 5:28 AM, Cygnia said:

BC, so I'd be invading Canada ;)

Pardon my long delay in replying. I have a really good excuse, but it's at the other end of my apartment under a pile of papers that need sorting out. I'll get to it one of these days. 

 

--Vancouver has a primarily elevated-train mass transit system. Take an opportunity to ride it from the Lynn Canyon down to the North Vancovuer seashore, and by Seabus (a big pile of sulfur along the harbour is one of Vancouver's landmark sights, I know, I know . . .) to the Vancouver terminal, and west and around to Surrey and up to Coquitlam and back to enjoy sweeping views of the city and surroundings south across the Fraser River and down into assorted backyards. Just don't do it at a rush hour-adjacent time! The newer train route down to the airport and central Richmond is a nicer ride, but doesn't offer much in the way of views, except when it crosses the river. Along the way, ditch the train long enough to take in the Hudson's Bay Company flagship store in downtown, perfect for all your "My cool aunt went to Vancouver and all she got me was this bottle of maple syrup" related needs. 

 

--Don't sleep on, as the young folks say, the older parks. Queen Elizabeth Park, at the summit of the city, as opposed to all the mountains around it, should definitely be on the list. And if you're into that sort of thing, the spooky, abandoned Heather Street Lands are just a few blocks along on the way to the Van Dusen Gardens, a beloved tourist trap which I have bicycled by many times, but never entered. (The cafe there is probably a foodie mecca. Probably!) Trout Lake is a bit of rural wilderness in the heart of the city, whereas Pacific Spirit Park is a bit of rural wilderness at the edge of the city. It's also adjacent to the climb down to Wreck Beach, our much-overhyped nudie beach, if you like that sort of stuff. I believe that the Museum of Anthropology, which is in this neighbourhood, is currently closed for embiggening, but the rest of campus is  nice, even if they keep removing the old books from the library and sending them off to automatic book-retrieval facilities. Grr. 

 

--Foodies will probably want to make excursions to the suburbs in search of authentically-fake Vancouver fusion ethnic food. The Richmond Night Market opens 28 April this year, and you should definitely check it out if you're in town. I have a suspicion that Koreatown, way out east in the Burnaby-Lougheed neighbourhood, is overlooked, and the Banana Leaf, right here in Kitsilano, is the go-to place for Malaysian food, although I have never been in there, having been turned on to the national cuisine by the late, lamented Spoon Kitchen. Another drag to check out in Kits is from the top of 4th Avenue down to Granville Island, (Another touristy-trap area to check out, with fun ferries across the formerly industrial False Creek to the heart of the city).

 

I probably better stop now before I start talking about dyke walks (and dyke walks, but that's way out on Commercial) and the joys of biking through the laneways and tiny little parks that are right next to bigger parks, only nicer. 

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