Downtown Seattle has had its tree lighting tradition at the Westlake Center for 20 years. It sounded like a big deal, so we made plans to watch the tree lighting and the lighting of the Macy's star. There was also the Macy's Parade Friday morning, but it started at 9:00, which was too early for us to want to get up for. We watched some of it on TV and it was really similar to the Seafair Parade.

So, anyway, we started walking downtown around 4 and it was really really busy. There were people everywhere shopping and eating out. It was so busy that we could hardly walk through some sidewalks. Every Starbucks we walked by had long lines too. All of downtown is decorated with lights on most trees and decorations on buildings. The Sheraton hotel has some ginger bread houses on display that I've heard are really cool. There's also a little miniature mountain village with trains on display at one of the Macy's windows. Even Pike Place Market has its own Christmas tree and light displays in the shapes of fruits.

The tree lighting started at 5 and thousands of people gathered around the Westlake Center. There were live choir performances of Christmas songs and the mayor gave a short speech about the LED lights on the Christmas tree that save a lot of energy compared to regular lights. It was almost time to light the tree when the microphones and sound system stopped working. Eventually the host figured out a way to get the crowd to start counting down to light up the tree. It was really neat watching it light up and then watching the huge Macy's star light up. There were supposed to be fireworks also, but they were called off due to high winds. It sucked that they had technical problems, but at least the tree and star still worked.

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