I spent the afternoon in downtown Seattle on my own, browsing Westlake Shopping Centre, Pike Place, and the piers along the water. I finally got to see Nordstrom’s, which is essentially the top floor of Sears. Here’s an odd difference between Canadian and American shops: in the US you have your poor man’s department store (Target) and your rich man’s department store (Nordstrom’s), while Canadians mostly lump everything in one store, like Sears or The Bay.
At night, I joined up with Shawn and Shell, and we went to the University of Washington to see a very packed but very entertaining lecture on Mars. The lecture hall put BSB 147 to shame, it probably had a over 500 people in it.
After the lecture, the line up to the telescope was too long, so we went searching for our own little treasures: sculptures in a bohemian part of town called Fremont.
There is the Fremont troll, who dwells underneath the I-99 and can be seen eating a real Volkswagen. There’s a statue of Lenin, apparently rescued from post-USSR Russia, and a model space rocket, made of actual parts from Lockheed Martin.