"Skylink's Seattle Page (under... " a Seattle Travel Page by Skylink

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More text will be added. My Singapore and Sydney pages are the most complete pages that I have written.

Seattle is neither one of the 20 largest cities in the United States, nor is it the capital of the state of Washington. It is not a major tourist destination either. Seattle is not a high profile city. However, Seattle is a very pleasant city and an interesting place to visit.

Pictured here is the Columbia Seafirst Center (now called Bank of America Tower) which is the tallest building in the city. The Smith Tower was built in 1914. At that time, it was the tallest building in the western United States (west of the Mississippi River). It's elevators are not automatic and require attendants to operate. The names of some other big buildings are Key Tower (brown building to the right of the tall black building), 2 Union Square (the white and silver building with the flag pole and angular structure on top), Washington Mutual Tower (on 2nd Street, the brown buildingwith a roof like a house), The 2 new stadiums are the black Safeco Field and the white Seahawks Arena. In the United States, stadium names change often because the name is sold to companies. Key Arena is named after Key Bank but the name is likely to change as the basketball team has moved to Oklahoma City and the bank's contract for the name depends on several factors, including having a basketball team play there. The Kingdome has been torn down.

The Olympic Mountains is west of Seattle but only flat land and water is west of Everett (where Boeing has a factory). Therefore, the mountains block some of the rain in Seattle but there is nothing to block the rain going to Everett. This is an example of different
climates in the Seattle area.

There are some scenic spots around Seattle. Around Lake Union, you can see the many boats as well as floatplanes take off. On the map, the lake looks small, but in person it looks big. There are steep hills surrounding the lake making it easy to find a vantage point. Try Queen Anne hill (north end) or, if you are not driving, look out the window from Interstate 5 (I-5). There are panoramic views of downtown from Alki Beach in West Seattle and by taking the ferries from the downtown ferry terminal.