Won over by a flying visit to Seattle

It’s not just their football team that the people of Seattle have to get excited about, discovers Niall McIlroy.

If it was possible for the winter blues to be banished by a city’s collective hot-blooded passion for its sporting team, I saw it in Seattle. The city was rippling with navy and green. The citizens were bouncing — a good proportion of them clad in Seattle Seahawks colours and it was all because a miraculous comeback in an elimination match saw their team in its second successive NFL Super Bowl. All that stood between them and another title was the New England Patriots in the decider at the University of Phoenix Stadium, Arizona.

It was an unseasonably warm 12C — rather apt, for everywhere I saw flags hanging from house and car windows, each bearing that number. The number 12 represented the “extra man” the people of Seattle provided with their support. There were good- luck messages on restaurant chalkboards and on portable signs out the front of fast-food joints and in shop windows. A biplane dragged a huge “12” flag behind it on the Friday before the final, and I heard a man say with relish to a colleague, “Sunday is a day closer”. He wasn’t talking about a church service: there is a religious fervour in Seattle for the Seahawks.

Twelfth man signs of support were everywhere. Picture: Niall McIlroy

Seattle is the home of Boeing and it’s fitting that it’s known as the Jet City for mine was a very fleeting flying visit. But I did get a few hours over a couple of days to wander around.

It was enough time to discover that Seattle’s not all about football. There’s also a passion for fish and the city is renowned for the quality of its seafood. Immediately after check-in at my hotel, Marriott Waterfront, I took a stroll along Alaskan Way, trying to walk out a bit of jet lag. I was jolted awake by a riot of neon at the seafood restaurants lining the waterfront.

Just up the hill, Pike Place farmers’ market is the oldest in the country. And everywhere I turned there were huge, silvery salmon, crabs and rockfish on ice, as well as fresh fruit, yoghurt, cheeses and cookies. The fog had rolled in but the place was buzzing, especially at the world’s first Starbucks.

There’s no shortage of fish and seafood, Seattle is known for it, at Pike Place Market. Picture: Niall McIlroy

I quickly understood why Seattle is one of the US’s fastest-growing cities. It’s studded with parks — giving it another nickname, the Emerald City — and sits on a thin finger of land, hemmed by Puget Sound (an inlet of the Pacific) to the west and Lake Washington to the east.

Beyond these waters loom the Olympic Mountains. The Cascades are off to the east. It’s a rather unusual landscape but it’s oh-so-pretty and while the north-east pocket of the country was frozen and snowbound, the mountains blocked the worst of the weather for Seattle. The only annoyance can be precipitation — although not a wet city, it drizzles every second day for much of the year. Rain was no issue but visibility was sometimes poor — I woke to the sound of a foghorn on a day when no one saw the sun until 3.30pm. It soon set.

It was a good thing no planes were taking off or coming in to land at Boeing Field. Those days are long gone for the 150-plus aircraft on display at the Museum of Flight. I’d have loved to have taken a spin on the Concorde or the first Air Force One. I would’ve been much less keen on the only surviving Boeing 80A. One of the earliest purpose-built passenger planes, it also carried mail and on May 15, 1930, the first air stewardess, Ellen Church. There were strict criteria for those first stewardesses: they had to be a registered nurse, single, no older than 25, no heavier than 52kg and no taller than 163cm. Having arrived in Seattle to fly back on Scoot’s new Boeing 787 Dreamliner, the museum was a reminder of how far aviation has come in 112 years since the Wright brothers took to the sky.

The City of Auburn Boeing 80A carried 18 passengers. Picture: Niall McIlroy

Time was tight in Seattle but I couldn’t leave without ascending that icon of the city, the Space Needle. It was built for the 1962 World’s Fair and tops out at 184m. I bought my ticket and joined a group in the lift for the 41-second ride to the observation deck at 158m. I quickly wished I hadn’t as we rose high above the city: the view from the lift combined with jet lag had me feeling a little unsteady.

Out on the observation deck, the fog miraculously dissipated for a good 10 minutes, giving me great views of downtown Seattle, Lake Union and the Cascades. I felt rumbling under foot, which panicked me slightly, so I quit after a few minutes and headed back down, figuring the Space Needle was the last place I wanted to be in an earthquake. I needn’t have worried — the tower was built to withstand 320km/h winds, tremors up to nine on the Richter scale, and has lightning rods on the roof.

Seattle’s iconic Space Needle was built for the World’s Fair in 1962. Picture: Niall McIlroy

My short time in Seattle passed so quickly and I departed on Super Bowl eve, leaving that jittery 12th man collectively willing the Seahawks to another title. For its part, Seattle had already won me over.

When I arrived in Singapore two days later, Sunday didn’t really exist — the international dateline saw to that. Back on the ground, the news wasn’t good for the 12th man of Seattle: the Seahawks had lost 24-28.

Niall McIlroy visited Seattle as a guest of Scoot and Boeing.

FACT FILE

For the Seattle Space Needle, go to spaceneedle.com/home.

The Seattle Marriott Waterfront is at 2100 Alaskan Way, Seattle. marriott.com.