


The grand finale for my best friend’s birthday tour around Seattle was me treating her to a late lunch at Ivar’s Salmon House.
When I was at North Passage Point Park for a preview last year I couldn’t help but notice the nearby Salmon House, a Seattle institution since 1970. It stuck in my head ever since that I’d really like to eat there sometime, but I needed a good excuse. So when my friend said she wanted to do Seattle stuff for her birthday I thought, aha!

For those landing on this page specifically to compare the Seattle Space Needle to the Sky View Observatory, scroll down to just below the photos.
Read Urban Outing parts one and two here.
The trip from the Mt. Baker Ridge Viewpoint to the Columbia Center for the next stop on my best friend’s urban birthday tour couldn’t have gone more smoothly. We drove right to the parking garage entrance with nary a problem.
This was a huge relief because I’d been dreading driving downtown. It helped immensely that we didn’t have to deal with hairy weekday traffic. Anxiety attack successfully avoided!
The Sky View Observatory was the Really Big Thing I planned for our Seattle outing. The most touristy, most urban thing. Neither of us had been there before, and I was excited to visit such an attraction for the first time in my own city.
The observatory is something anyone can enjoy, whether you’re a lifelong Seattle area resident or just here for one day before an Alaska cruise.

As we left the Woodland Park Rose Garden I wasn’t paying attention to the time. My best friend and I were happily chatting away as we drove back to Capitol Hill to get back on the originally planned tour route.
As I mentioned in Part One, my friend left the planning for this outing up to me. I had kept my plans a secret, so she didn’t know what to expect after we left the garden. I told her we were going to a viewpoint that was on my list of places to preview for this blog, and that this would be my first time there also. I think she got a kick out of being my park previewing partner.