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Seattle Day 1
Sep. 1st, 2024 10:29 amBecause I am an older gamer, I tend to prefer older games. However, I also like new games that play like old games. To get a preview of such games, I attended Penny Arcade Expo (known as PAX) in Seattle. It’s a gaming convention that I’ve visited a few times previously with my last visit in 2013. Seattle is also a city I enjoy and many of my co-workers live there.
Denver and Seattle are comparable in terms of population and size but beyond that they are quite different cities. Downtown Seattle is livelier. That’s probably a result of multiple corporate headquarters there which bring in people during the day to patronize cafes, restaurants, etc. There are also tourist attractions which are lacking in Denver. Tourists don’t come to Denver specifically, they come to Colorado (to ski).
Traffic was light and the public transit was great. Buses and trains run often and are cheap. There are lots of bike lanes for cyclists, scooters, etc. I enjoyed wandering around downtown Seattle. A negative is the homelessness and drug problem seem much bigger in Seattle. There are also bible thumpers and political activists polluting the streets with noise. Typical problems for many big cities.
I took a walking tour (as usual) and the guide explained that not many people live downtown; they just work there. That makes lunch expensive but dinner cheap and happy hour prevalent. I’d have to better research the seasonal weather but maybe someday I would like to live there. For this trip, the weather was perfect and even my solar powered wristwatch functioned!
Having water everywhere is quite a bit different than being in a landlocked state and I especially liked watching the seaplanes take off and land from the big lakes. Also, the seafood was naturally better than Colorado so I ate as much as I could stomach.
I went to 2 museums, moPOP and MOHAI. The first is a pop culture museum and the other for Seattle history and industry. moPOP is neat for nerds like me but still a bit pricey at $33 for a museum that can be complete in under 2 hours. MOHAI highlights the engineering feats needed to build Seattle and the history of the region.
Asian culture is more common in Seattle than Denver and I overheard Japanese tourists / locals. I ate some good Japanese comfort food too. I attempted to visit a pinball arcade /museum but they close at 6pm which is way too early and I missed it.
Unfortunately, several of my co-workers are down with COVID but the healthy one was able to hang out for drinks and dinner. It was nice meeting them face-to-face, a person I speak to frequently on WebEx calls. I admit that I was anxious about getting sick at the convention, so I wore a mask there. I’ll write about the convention itself in the next entry.
Denver and Seattle are comparable in terms of population and size but beyond that they are quite different cities. Downtown Seattle is livelier. That’s probably a result of multiple corporate headquarters there which bring in people during the day to patronize cafes, restaurants, etc. There are also tourist attractions which are lacking in Denver. Tourists don’t come to Denver specifically, they come to Colorado (to ski).
Traffic was light and the public transit was great. Buses and trains run often and are cheap. There are lots of bike lanes for cyclists, scooters, etc. I enjoyed wandering around downtown Seattle. A negative is the homelessness and drug problem seem much bigger in Seattle. There are also bible thumpers and political activists polluting the streets with noise. Typical problems for many big cities.
I took a walking tour (as usual) and the guide explained that not many people live downtown; they just work there. That makes lunch expensive but dinner cheap and happy hour prevalent. I’d have to better research the seasonal weather but maybe someday I would like to live there. For this trip, the weather was perfect and even my solar powered wristwatch functioned!
Having water everywhere is quite a bit different than being in a landlocked state and I especially liked watching the seaplanes take off and land from the big lakes. Also, the seafood was naturally better than Colorado so I ate as much as I could stomach.
I went to 2 museums, moPOP and MOHAI. The first is a pop culture museum and the other for Seattle history and industry. moPOP is neat for nerds like me but still a bit pricey at $33 for a museum that can be complete in under 2 hours. MOHAI highlights the engineering feats needed to build Seattle and the history of the region.
Asian culture is more common in Seattle than Denver and I overheard Japanese tourists / locals. I ate some good Japanese comfort food too. I attempted to visit a pinball arcade /museum but they close at 6pm which is way too early and I missed it.
Unfortunately, several of my co-workers are down with COVID but the healthy one was able to hang out for drinks and dinner. It was nice meeting them face-to-face, a person I speak to frequently on WebEx calls. I admit that I was anxious about getting sick at the convention, so I wore a mask there. I’ll write about the convention itself in the next entry.