It's been a while since we showed some love to Seattle, the city in Washington state where the Fifty Shades Trilogy is set. When I recently came across this hauntingly beautiful photo on Smithsonian.com, I immediately wanted to share it with our readers. 

The photo, captioned "Lightening Hitting the Seattle Space Needle" is by Seattle-based photographer Clane Gessel, who captured the stunning image on August 1, 2010. The photo was not only featured as a photo of the day, it was also named as one of Smithsonian Magazine's Editors Pick's from their 2012 photo contest.

Fifty Shades of Grey author E L James has embarked on her latest book tour and for the first time she visited one of the major cities where her books take place - Seattle, Washington. James told Katie Couric last week that she was "so excited" to be visiting the two cities that were featured prominently in her books - the other being Portland, Oregon. This past weekend James was treated to the VIP treatment in Seattle and was busy tweeting her whereabouts and sharing many photos along the way.

The movie and merchandising rights have already been snapped up, and fans have been creating some great Fifty Shades products on Etsy so it was only a matter of time before the tourism industry jumped on board. The cities of Seattle, Washington and Portland, Oregon began reaping the benefits of the success of Fifty Shades of Grey book series. Many locations including Escala, Pike Place Market, and The Heathman Hotel have become popular tourist destinations for fans of the books, so I decided to look into some of the getaway packages that I've been hearing about.