May. 7, 2008 at 5:26pm

Walking from Pacific to Thea's Landing and back

and walking and walking

I, being the lucky girl that I am, had lunch with my sweetheart today. I took some sandwiches and stuff downtown and we walked down Pac Ave to Union Station. This is my new favorite place to share homemade lunch. There are cafe' tables downstairs and the windows look out over the little liberty bell garden and the glass bridge. It is quiet, warm, clean and free. You just have to show your ID to enter the building. There are even clean bathrooms down there. (Attn: Fredo! This is where the urinal signs should point -- they are open to the ID carrying public.)

After lunch, we decided to walk over the glass bridge to the marina and down a few blocks and then climb the stairs that would lead us back over to 15th & Pacific. So we meandered around the fence and the bagel shop, noticing that the bagel shop was pitifully empty as we circled it. I wonder if they would get more business if the fence were removed and a big window and door were added to the north face of the cafe'. It is a shame that the windows along Pacific are not more pedestrian friendly.

We had a nice walk across the bridge dodging tourists and groups of students.  It was quiet down by Thea's Landing, but Woody's had some lunch customers. The construction on the new building seems to be progessing nicely; I hadn't seen it in a while, so I was surprised. But a bigger surprise greeted us when we went around the corner... no stairs. Last summer there were stairs from near Johnny's up to the overpass, today there were none. There is a nice new walkway up around the overpass, with some pretty flowers and taller plants that create a nice buffer from the traffic, but that route was definitely less convenient and longer than the stairs. There were some workers struggling with some concrete in an opening in the rail. Perhaps new stairs will be built in that location, closer to Johnny's. I sure hope so, as we need more connections from Pacific Ave to Dock Street, not less!

The stairs used to go from here
 
to here

Maybe they will put them in here? (see the orange cone?)


here is part of the long walk with the pretty flowers

Oh, and there is a nice view from the walkway of the beautiful gravel on the new roof. A garden sure would be nice; I think someone already mentioned that in their blog.