Seattle Meanderings
In total, we spent about a week in Seattle. The weather was just about perfect and we found lots to do (hence the lack of updates).
We went back into the city a couple of times and somehow managed to end up at Piroshky Piroshky again. 
Dasy had a smoked salmon piroshky, which was shaped like a fish (and still quite tasty). Speaking of fish, we also went to the Seattle aquarium. The aquarium had some nice exhibits and a cool “touching pool”, where you could touch starfish, urchins and anemones. It was pretty neat, but I didn’t get many decent pictures. Shooting through glass and moving reflective water doesn’t work so well without some filters that I don’t have right now.
We also went to the Space Needle, the science center and the sci-fi museum. All of this was paid for with a City Pass. City Pass is a collection of tickets to various shows and attractions, all at one price for a “book”, which is good for nine days. Most of the tickets are good for one entry to the attraction, but some are good for multiple… The Space Needle allowed for two visits in 24 hours, so you could see the view during day and night (we only did night). 
The City Pass isn’t a bad value if you plan on hitting multiple attractions.
Another area we visited a couple of times was the International District. Imagine a “Chinatown”, but instead of being just Chinese shops, it’s a little bit of everything. Korean, Chinese, Japanese, Thai, Mongolian, etc. We even found a Cambodian noodle shop! Unfortunately, it was closed on Monday, which is when we were there. 
We ended up having noodles somewhere else (I think it was a kind of Asian fusion place… a little mishmash of everything).
Seattle is kind of a big melting pot. There are a lot of nationalities represented by both the inhabitants and the visitors. We spent a fair amount of time with a group of Cambodian friends from one of the congregations in the area. We had a lot of fun, met a bunch of new friends and it gave Dasy a bit of an insight into how easy (or hard) it would be for her to relearn Cambodian (she speaks just fine, but would need to learn reading and writing again). Mostly, we just had fun hanging out with them.
I’m not going to take a lot of time going into each of the museums and what there is, but I’ll give you a few general opinions that I think Dasy and I agree on.
First, we’re probably spoiled by living in Washington, DC for so long. All of the museums and attractions we went to were “nice”, but none were great and we probably would have been a little miffed at all of them if we’d paid the regular admission prices. The aquarium was small and overcrowded, the science center was almost completely geared towards children, etc. Don’t get me wrong, we didn’t hate any of them and we’re glad we went to each of them. But, we’re used to the Smithsonians in DC. Those are museums! We should spend more time in them when we go back to DC.
There were a couple of exceptions though… One of the items in the City Pass is for Argosy Cruises, which offer a number of sightseeing tours around the sound. It was very interesting to see Seattle from the water and the announcer did a good job of explaining everything. It was just a pleasant cruise and a good break after walking around the city all day.
The other one that we really liked was the Science Fiction museum. It’s a little on the small side and there’s nothing “interactive”, but if you’re a sci-fi buff and in the area, you need to go. They have a ton of cool stuff on display and most of it is pretty well known, even by those who aren’t really into sci-fi movies and books. They have about four full outfits from Blade Runner, a bunch of stuff from all the Star Wars and Star Treks (including the original captain’s chair), a Terminator robot, Buck Rodgers robots… I could go on and on! They have some cool “classic” stuff too… Like Logan’s Run and even Metropolis! Ok, I’ll stop now.
Oh, if you plan to take pictures at the Sci-Fi museum, bring a compact tripod, a fast lens and a circular polarizing filter. Everything is behind glass, poorly lit for photography and no flashes are allowed! I managed to get a few decent pics, but I wish I’d known the conditions earlier.
Speaking of pictures, I have way too many to stuff into one blog post. So, I made a short slide show of the highlights. It’s probably about 30 pictures or so, but if you’ve been following us so far, you’ll probably enjoy it. Just click here for the slideshow whenever you’re ready and it should open in it’s own window (hit the little play button if you don’t want to click them manually).
Note: We’re currently in Shelton, WA and will be heading to Mount Rainier tomorrow. We’re about a week behind on the blog and will be filling in some posts about Port Angeles and Olympic National Park over the next few days.
Seeing it, Trips
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aquarium, City Pass, international district, Science Fiction Museum, Seattle, Space Needle, Washington
Themocracy
Incredible pictures. I forwarded the link to our niece who will be traveling there to run the Seattle Marathon.
Cool! Marathon is out of our league. We have only run short races. We like short races. Our longest race was an 8K.
Tell your niece to visit this link also: http://www.seattlepi.com/visitorsguide/
It is a great link that lists the following:
11 top attractions around town
15 free things to do
9 things to do outdoors
14 fairs and festivals to visit
10 places east of Seattle
12 places south of Seattle
10 places north of Seattle
7 places west of Seattle
10 great coffee shops
30+ kid-friendly places
13+ places to see art
14 gardens to explore
Good to get an update from you two again especially since we are not traveling right now! Seattle sounds like an interesting place to visit. Anxious to hear about Olympic National Park too. Take care…….
I’m so jealous, Science Fiction Museum really?!?!?
Yeah, it was one of my favorite stops. I’ll see if I can recover a few more bad pictures and post em on Flickr or something for you.
Love the pictures guys! I can’t believe the city shots you got…Outstanding! When we get there we will definitely have to check out the sci-fi museum. I like the octopus on the rock. Great conversation piece.
It took me about three nights worth of effort to get some of those shots… therems only so much you can do with a mediocre lens and a wobbly tripod.