I spent most of yesterday morning, and then a couple of hours of yesterday afternoon, with Alexia; we were together probably roughly five hours total. It began with the two-hour Seattle Architecture Tour we took, and that was followed by a spontaneous self-guided tour of one of the residential skyscrapers that happened to have been noted as part of the architecture tour.

But I'll have to get back to all of that momentarily. I've wound up doing so much this weekend, it's a little more nuts than I first anticipated. A big part of it is still having Beth as a house guest, but I actually had a lot planned for this weekend already before I even know for sure she'd be coming.

To that end, I should mention Friday real quick. For some time I already planned to take myself to see Deadpool & Wolverine that night, which I anticipated going to by myself. When Beth arrived Tuesday night, and a day or two later I told her all the stuff I already had planned for the week she was now to be here and that she was welcome to join for anything she was interested in, she said she'd like to come to the movie with me.

So, after an unusually crap day at work on Friday (no fault of anyone there particularly, just a day of putting out a huge fire of something that went wrong), I took the bus downtown from work and Beth took the bus downtown from the condo on Capitol Hill, and we went to the 5:00 showing. She was waiting in line for an ordered takeout dinner at Johnny Rocket's when I got to the fourth floor of Pacific Place.

Beth seemed to like the movie okay, albeit without a huge amount of enthusiasm. My response to it was mixed at best, and when I wrote the review after getting back home on the bus, I gave it a B-minus. I laughed a pretty good amount during that movie and so for a little while I thought I would give it a solid B, but after I considered all the things actually wrong with it, I downgraded it a minor step.

Shobhit worked that night to the unusually late hour of 11:00, so I really thought maybe he wouldn't get a Social Review point for that day even though Beth was staying with us—it would make no sense to give him one if we never actually hung out the three of us together, even at home. But then, shortly after he got home and I was brushing my teeth to get ready for bed, Shobhit called me out to the living room because he was watching his recording of the opening ceremonies of the Summer Olympics in Paris, and he knew I would be interested in the light show they were doing against the Eiffel Tower. I came out to the living room begrudgingly and annoyed, but then did sit and watch the ceremonies for a while, even after they switched to focus on the running of the torch and the Eiffel Tower was no longer the focus. They ended it with a hot air balloon sort of monument to the inventor of that mode of flying, who I guess was a Frenchman, so that was kind of cool in its own right.

That got me to bed rather late, and then I only barely got ready in time yesterday morning for Alexia to meet me at The Braeburn at 9:15. Here was was thinking I was barely managing to get ready a bit ahead of schedule, but for some reason I only remembered the 5 correctly and thought she was meeting me at 9:45. That made no logical sense, actually, as we were supposed to take the half-hour walk downtown to the architecture tour's starting spot, and that would have only given us 15 minutes to walk. 9:15 makes much more sense, so why I did not remember it that way, I could not say. The way my brain works remains a mystery.

Well, I had finished getting ready, and sat down to my computer thinking I had about 20 minutes to process a few more photos I had taken on Thursday evening. Then I got a text from Alexia at 9:06 that read, Good morning! I’m on time and walking around the corner to the front courtyard.

Oops. Downstairs I went! The photos had to wait until later.

Speaking of photos, I have taken a lot more this weekend (so far!) than I normally do when there's not some major event that would result in a travelogue / photo digest email. Between yesterday and today, I have saved a total of 167 photos and video clips. 58 were taken on the Seattle Architecture Tour ("Modern Beauty and the Pedestrian Experience"); one was taken at lunch with Alexia; 50 were taken on our self-guided tour of the Cirrus apartment tower (more on that momentarily); 7 were taken hanging out with Shobhit and Beth last night; and 48 were taken this morning with Danielle at the new Seattle location of the Museum of Illusions (more will come on that in a later post). Beyond that, another 4 shots with Shobhit, Beth and Danielle at the lunch of pani puris Shobhit made for lunch at home this afternoon.

I guess I could tell you a bit more about the Seattle Architecture Tour now.

Alexia and I left the Braeburn Condominiums around 9:15; then walked down to the same "Triangle Park" we had met for the Architecture Tour last weekend. We were deep in conversation when I realized it was 10:00 and no one else seemed to be around. Did we come to the wrong spot? I checked the confirmation email, and there was a distinction, albeit one clearly easy to confuse: this week's meeting spot was at "Urban Triangle Park," at 2100 Westlake. The place we met last week was at "the triangle park" across the street from Whole Foods, address 2200 Westlake. We needed to go one block further south on Westlake, and indeed, when we got there we found the tour group.

This was a very well attended tour, at least 12 people, including the tour guide himself as well as his wife who was tagging along, and who had apparently been a previous Executive Director of the Seattle Architecture Foundation. When we explained that we had gone to the same meeting spot for last weekend's tour and which tour it was ("South Lake Union Then & Now"), the tour guide warned us that there would be a good amount of overlap between the two tours, and for that reason they have actually be considering scrapping one or the other of these two particular tours. We said this was fine.

And, indeed, the first hour and twenty minutes of "Modern Beauty and the Pedestrian Experience" took us through the Denny Triangle neighborhood, covering nothing that was on last week's tour. Then, by about 11:20, yesterday's tour did indeed cross Denny Way into the South Lake Union neighborhood, and from then until the end of the tour, all but one of the stops had indeed been on last week's tour. But, as Alexia rightly noted, the two still had very different perspectives; last week's tour had a lot more focus on history, and this week's had much more emphasis on, as the tour title suggested, the pedestrian experience.

My only minor disappointment, actually, was that this week's tour did not go anywhere south of Denny Triangle—and surely there is plenty of interesting at-grade architectural design in the rest of Downtown. As it was, the tour through Denny Triangle focused almost entirely on the development in this neighborhood that has occurred in only the past seven or eight years, which is to say, all the Amazon headquarters buildings, and by extension the many residential high-rises that would also not likely exist without Amazon being down there. To be fair, we still learned a lot about pedestrian pathways, particularly unusual ones that cut through the centers of blocks, that we did not previously know about. A notable example is "The Stumpery," with boardwalk-like paths around several tree stumps at the base of the Amazon "Nitro North" building, at the corner of 8th Ave and Bell St, a photo of which is seen at the very top of this post.

My photo album for last weekend's architecture tour wound up with 65 shots; this week's with 59. It would have been more, but although I still took at least one shot at each of this weekend's tour stops, I took a lot fewer at all those stops we had already stopped at, where I already took several pictures, last week.

I don't know how the subject came up, but when I mentioned that we have a Shake Shack in downtown Seattle, Alexia was immediately interested in going there for lunch. We already had plenty of leftovers at home from the food Shobhit made for dinner on Thursday, but if Alexia wanted to go to Shake Shack for lunch I wasn't going to argue.

Alexia doesn't usually buy my meals when we go out, but she did yesterday, somewhat forcing my hand when all the other kiosks were occupied and she already knew I wanted the "'Shroom Burger" I had already raved to her about. She already had it on her order screen, and I was like, "Are you getting a 'Shroom Burger too?" She said, "No, I'm getting yours." Oh, all right! I have a minor suspicion she did this partly because we've already made plans to have her over for dinner, finally, for the first time since she moved to Issaquah and as a now-very-belated thank-you for the last time she looked after the cats while we were out of town. (The last time she did that would be weekends I was gone during the same time Shobhit was in India, back in late March and early May. As it happens, Alexia was the first to notice the disturbingly dark and liquidy vomits Shanti was doing that no doubt ultimately led to her passing in May.)

Alexia decided to get herself a vanilla milkshake with her regular cheeseburger. That was the last thing I needed, but whatever! I got a chocolate salted caramel milkshake for myself. And you know what? That calorie bomb of a lunch was fuckin delicious!

Shake Shake happened to be right across the street from that "urban triangle park" where the tour had started, at which the tour guide had said a few things about the at-grade designs of buildings flanking that park on two sides: "Stratus," and "Cirrus." Both buildings are among fourteen that stand in Seattle at 440 feet tall; of those fourteen, these two are among the half of them (7) with 41 floors; 3 have 40 floors; 2 have 38; one has 36 and one has 42. That's all according to Wikipedia, anyway; I couldn't say how many of these do that ridiculous thing of skipping 13 in numbering their floors.

Anyway, we crossed Westlake from Shake Shack, then crossed Lenora, finding ourselves in front of the main entrance to the Cirrus Apartments. A sandwich board was out front with a QR code with the tantalizing offer to "Take a self-guided tour!"

I was like: yes! Let's do that! Funnily enough, I had already mentioned to Alexia during the tour that I have been thinking for a while about making a hobby out of finding open houses to tour high-rise residential units for sale or rent that I had no intention of buying or renting. And here we were, facing this. It was a sign from the Skyscraper Gods!

I scanned the QR code. It kind of came as no surprise that it involved a lot of hoops to jump through before we could actually get inside the building. I had to sign up for an account. I had to select a timed tour, which alone made me think we may have to bag the idea—but then it showed an available tour at 1:15, and when I saw that, it was like 1:07. I had to download an app, something I could imagine being a deal breaker for Shobhit (thankfully he wasn't with us), who hates being forced to add apps to his phone.

I finally got some instructions started on the app, but how to get into the building lobby to begin with was unclear. We managed to just go in behind someone else. We tried to use the elevators the app told us to take but could not type in a floor number without scanning an electric fob. We finally figured out there was a self-guided tour fob and key in a lock box mounted to the wall around the corner. And as soon as she saw us standing there, the young Black woman working the concierge desk asked us, "Are you trying to do the tour? I have the key here." Apparently there was some sort of glitch with the lock box, so they were just keeping the fob and key at the front desk. The young woman handed them to me, and then we were off: now we were able to take the elevator to the tour's first stop, straight up to the rooftop terrace on the top floor, floor 41.

It was absolutely spectacular. The rooftop terrace itself was very well designed and spacious with very cool, weather resistant and padded furniture to sit on, spaced around two different sides of the building, with a small space you could walk into on a third. The views, much like when Lynn and Zephyr's friend took us up Premiere on Pine late last summer, were amazing and from unique vantage points not at all often seen. I took 29 shots of the views from the rooftop terrace alone.

We also had access, thanks to the electronic fob, to common spaces: a demonstration kitchen; a "Board Room"; a gaming room with pool (one young woman was in there playing that) and ping pong and even a poker table. The views to the north were through the windows from that room, although some pretty cool views of the Space Needle framed by other buildings could be seen looking to the right from the terrace deck outside on the west side of the building.

The self-guided tour also included three units we could look at, one of them a two-bedroom on the 29th floor; the other two one-bedrooms on the 22nd and 7th floors. The one on the 29th floor had the best views from any of these units, of course, but Alexia and I agreed that it had an odd layout, and we both much preferred the spaciousness of the unit on the 22nd floor. We took a selfie on the balcony of that unit, the view to the north behind us.

We were first going up the elevator at 1:20, and the last photo I took, in the third and final unit that had been on the 7th floor, was at 1:50. So, we took a solid half hour, a half hour incredibly well spent. Once I returned the fob and key (the key worked in one of the unit doors; the other two had just been left unlocked) and we were back outside, walking back toward Capitol Hill and for Alexia to return to her car, I checked how many photos I had just taken in that half an hour—and it was just over 50, nearly as many as I had taken on the two-hour architecture tour! (When editing photos later, I kept an even 50.)

After I posted to my socials about this later in the day, more than one person asked about the rents. There had been flyers in each of the units with very concise information about this, and I was kicking myself that I did not take a picture of one. The rents, as you can imagine, are bonkers high: the 3-bedrooms barely falling short of $10,000 a month, and the fees that come with any pet ownership or parking space rental would certainly make it pass that mark. Anyway, I later found a page on the Cirrus website with this information, and saved a screenshot of it that I could share in reply to those questions. The flyer had more and better information, especially as it included pet fee and parking costs all on one page. I won't make this same mistake the next time I do a tour like this—and I need to look into whether I can do the same thing at Stratus right across the street from Cirrus, which is under the same management.

I could probably start doing a lot of research to figure out where else I could do similar tours and/or open houses. I kind of hate the uniformity of so many residential towers exactly or nearly the same height (another 8 buildings fill out the range from 400' to 446', the vast majority of these being in or near the Denny Triangle neighborhood, giving the north end of downtown a skyline with a blandly flat look), but they sure do have fantastic views from inside—or on top of—them.

[posted 5:46 pm]