Olympia – The Capital of WA

Our day started early since it was the day Y was returning to Singapore and needed to be at the airport at 8.30am. Two other colleagues from a sister company decided to join us today and we wasted no time after depositing Y and his luggage, to proceed to Olympia the capital of Washington State.

The first place we went to was the City Hall. We signed up for a tour around the building and had a rather concise history lesson about the State of Washington.

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The state Washington, otherwise know as the Evergreen State, was the 42nd state to join the United States of America. All the chandeliers and lights in the building are from Tiffany’s and they are now priceless although they only cost USD5,000 and USD10,000 respectively in the 1920s.

We were very fortunate to have met the Olympia Highlanders, who were at the City Hall to take their official band pictures (note: Highlanders are Scottish descendants whose clans originated from the highlands in Scotland).

Now, on normal days under normal situations, I would most certainly appreciate the music from the bagpipes… but playing indoors in a building shaped like a dome was simply a recipe for disaster. I suppose I learnt something from this scenario, that bagpipes are meant to be played in the open air, like the highlands.

I hate to admit this, but I couldn’t wait to escape from the building.

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Following our walk through the numerous rooms and given a brief history of Washington, we were off to the Farmers’ Market nearby. Given that it was the weekend, the local produce market was lively and bustling with activity. It wasn’t too big though, and we managed to cover the whole place in less than thirty minutes.

We lingered around a bit more before deciding that we’d seen enough of what there was, and proceeded to Tacoma Mall. While window-shopping, I came to this very interesting shop called Build-A-Bear where shoppers can customise their own teddy bears. Ooh…. I would have loved to queue with the kids and get a teddy bear stitched up the way I wanted if I were with H (and not with 4 guys totally unrelated to me). And it’s relatively inexpensive to get a bespoke bear. On average, it costs about USD20.00 to get one done. The expensive items though, are the dresses and clothes for the bears.

After a quick lunch at Tacoma Mall, we drove on to Seattle downtown since both our new colleagues haven’t had the chance to visit it. By then, I was already nursing a headache. Not too sure if it was due to the heavy bag I was carrying or the cold climate. A definite dampener to my mood. It took us quite a while to find a parking lot, and finally, we found one on the steep slope characteristic of Seattle (since it was rebuilt above the ruins of the old Seattle which was destroyed by the earthquake). I reckoned the angle of elevation to be about 30 degrees. If you miss a footing while walking down, you can be rest assured you would be tumbling all the way down. No joke!

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Pike Place Market was really busy and packed with weekend shoppers; I’ve never quite seen it like this before since it was always closed when we headed that way. We took the opportunity to explore the market. It’s really like one of our local wet markets in Singapore, the western version. And I spotted a frightening-looking fish. Upon closer inspection, we learnt that it was called a monkfish. If the fishmonger was trying to attract more shoppers to his stall, he had totally succeeded. Effective marketing at its best.

Dinner that night was settled in downtown Seattle, following which we embarked on the long drive back to Everett before it got too late. P had more activities planned for the next day so we wanted to have ample rest.