So today at work I received this e-mail from an old friend who has been in Seattle for work recently (he is from NYC):

Okay, so my team has been worked crazy hard for the past few weeks and the partners on the study, to ease our pain, want to do an event. We’re having dinner at the Waterfront Grill at 5:30, and we are getting the afternoon off. We have from around 3 - 5:30 to do something ridiculous. I want to do something that normally I would never do myself- like play pool, or billiards. I’m thinking like a helicopter tour of seattle. Any other really ridiculously cool things that we can do on a Wed. afternoon in Seattle?

So my initial reaction is to smack him upside the head via e-mail for even considering doing anything indoors. But, being a kind souled human, I decided to work up my best list of outdoor activities in the city. Since they only have 2 hours, I would have loved to add outdoor drinking (my personal fave) but they already have a dinner planned.

Here was what I came up with:

• Take the water taxi from Elliott Bay across the water to Alki, walk down the beach
• walk through the Pike Place market to the waterfront street park and people watch endlessly
• I haven’t been to the outdoor sculpture park at the end of the waterfront (right by WF grill) but its supposed to be cool
• Take a bus or cab up to Gasworks park and sit on kite hill/rent a kite and fly it (what I’m doing as soon as I get my ass out of here at 4:30)
• Take a ferry to Bainbridge and back
• Go up Queen Anne hill to any of the MANY amazing parks on the hill (recommended walking around to a couple) and admire the fucking fantastic views of all the mountains and water
• Walk through the locks in Ballard

Any other suggestions?