Posts Tagged ‘Seattle’

Underneath the streets of Seattle lurks another Seattle, Seattle from the past. Pretty much a whole precinct of Seattle has been built onto of an older precinct and today it lurks underneath full of dust, rats and reported spooks and ghosts. Fire destroyed much of the area in the late 1880’s and it was rebuilt using stone and brick two stories above to avoid flooding. In 1965 a local citizen called Bill Speidel started taking people on tours through this old world Seattle, and 40 odd years later it is one of the city’s more interesting tourist attractions. In the early years of last century the underground was used for a lot of illegal activities in the city with gambling halls, opium dens and sex trade. Today it serves as access to buildings above and home for a few rats and spirits, but a great experience to any visitor.

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Back in February on 1969 The city of Everett made history as the first Boeing 747 to fly. This aircraft was the first flying prototype to what would become one of the most successful aircraft in history with over 1400 of them sold over the last 40 odd years in various variants. The aircraft now lives back in Seattle only miles from where she was built in Everett. The plane is part of the wonderful collection that makes up the Museum of Flight at King County Airport just south of Seattle. The old girl is looking a bit tired and weary these days but the future looks bright although it may be a little time off. The Museum of Flight plan to build a new annex where a restored City of Everett will take centre stage regaining her former glory. Currently the Jumbo is parked in a lot open to the public with a 707 US Air force 1 Presidential Plane and Supersonic Concorde close by.

40km north of Seattle on America’s west coast is the Boeing Factory where their enormous aircraft are assembled. The complex is open to the public and offers an amazing insight into the design and construction of the worlds most popular commercial planes. The assembly building is the largest building by volume in the world and has a perimeter of 3.5km. The company offers a fantastic tour which starts off with the Future of Flight Aviation Centre which is an amazing interactive display with flight simulators, computerised attractions and quite a few full size displays of various parts of the planes. Then its off to the Boeing Everett Factory on a one our guided bus tour where you can see the planes being constructed. Once inside the factory you can see various types of planes in different stages of construction.

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