Seattle, Days 1 and 2, Seattle Center

Thumbs up for summer vacay! We were invited to a wedding in June in Seattle, so we figured, why not? We never made it there when we lived in Idaho, so it was worth going to show the kids the beautiful city on the Puget Sound.

We had an afternoon flight and decided to go sans rental car, since our hotel was in downtown. We were able to take a light rail from the airport to a stop just a couple of blocks from our hotel. It was a longer ride than a car, but how convenient to be able to take mass transit to the airport! Unfortunately, we rolled into our hotel right around 9pm when their restaurant closed. We must have looked a little bedraggled, because the clerk upgraded us to the 42nd floor! And we were rewarded with this awesome city view when we got up to our room.

The next morning we headed to Seattle Center, home of the Space Needle, for which we had reservations at 11. The monorail (from the 1962 World's Fair) just goes back and forth from downtown to Seattle Center, and it was just a block away from our hotel, so we hopped aboard. 

Seattle Center has parks, eateries, museums, and sports arenas. Our time zone shift had us up pretty early, so we rope-dropped (thanks for that term, Disney!) the Chihuly Museum when it opened. Dale Chihuly was a local glass blower who hit it big with art glass installations, chandeliers, and show pieces.

Part of the museum was a greenhouse with a giant yellow/orange flower vine and the Space Needle visible through the windows.

And the museum continued outside. This flowering tree was trying to compete with the fancy glass landscaping and holding its own! I guess they're not too concerned with hail or extreme weather there in Seattle.

Chihuly also had a bunch of random collections on display. My favorite were the antique radios, among which were several colorful Motorolas! There were also extensive collections of bottle openers, accordions, vintage toy cars, shaving brushes, and several other uniquely interesting things. 

The most disturbing were some ceramic string holders in the shape of creepy doll heads, where the string comes out of the mouth. Apparently, pre-WWII that was a handy thing people used to keep on the wall in the kitchen when things were often tied with twine. They were too unsettling to capture in a picture, but the brochure gives you some idea. Yikes!

Anyway, on to the main attraction next door - the Space Needle!

We had reservations for a certain time, but there was still a long line, because you have to wait for the elevator. First stop, all the way to the top! It's open air, but has a pretty tall plexiglass wall. The views were incredible! 360 degrees from water to mountains to skyscrapers. It was a sunny day for Seattle, but it was still too cloudy to see Mt. Rainier.

After we basked in the sun and enjoyed all of the views, we took stairs down to the revolving level below. There's a bar with tables and lots of open space to enjoy the views out and down as it slowly turns. I think we could have sat there all day.

I thought I would be a little freaked out by standing on a glass floor, but it actually wasn't too bad.

Plus, there were things that you could only see from this view. These gigantic spider paintings on a roof looked 3D enough that we thought they were sculptures at first glance. Watch out below! 

And this playground looks like an artist's rendering.

Once we'd finally had our fill of the views, we went to explore the playground we'd seen. These kids have played on some pretty scenic playgrounds in their travels. The weather was nearly perfect, and we all enjoyed the fresh air and sunshine.

Next door to the playground was MoPOP, or Museum of Pop Culture, which was also included on our CityPass. It started off as the Experience Music Project, founded by Paul Allen, but it has now expanded to cover Popular Culture.

There were sections for fantasy, horror, video games, and sci-fi, along with music.

Apparently, Paul Allen is a big collector, as 90% of the stuff on display was on loan from his personal collection. Some of the highlights were weapons from the Lord of the Rings movies, the Elf costume worn by Will Ferrell, the hoverboards from Back to the Future II, and a Jawa.

Of course, a large part of the music displays were devoted to the local music scene and the Grunge era of the '90s, including Nirvana and Pearl Jam.

They had some interesting stuff, like PJ's Grammys,

but by the time we hit the Pearl Jam exhibit, the kids were toast.

We sat outside in the perfect weather for a bit longer before we mustered up the energy to monorail it back to the hotel and find some dinner. The monorail stop was inside a little mall where we ended up eating dinner, but we took the long way to get there without realizing there was a second exit from the monorail, right next to it. Anyway, the kids wanted to check out the hotel pool after dinner, but it was a bit of a letdown with it being comically underfilled (the 5' end came up to Owen's bellybutton) and echo-ey like it was a floating fiberglass pool.