Seattle

Monday was the start of my wonderful Spring Break trip to the lovely state of Washington. Over the next week I will be showing you a little of what I've been up to.

Seattle:
The first order of business was to go straight from the airport to the Space Needle.
The view from the top was lovely. You can kinda see Mount Rainer in the distance in this shot (to the right of the buildings).
Seattle is quite lovely, mountains rising in the distance, calm waters. It was nice to get a good look around.
I wonder what the people in the circle are doing...

After the Space Needle I headed next door to the Experience Music Project. As a audiophile and general music junkie it was really a treat to be in the city where some of my favorite music started: early '90s grunge!
There was a really cool sculpture of instruments (mostly guitars) in the lobby.
This building and the adjacent Science Fiction Museum are part of a Frank Gehry designed building. If you think these buildings look crazy on the outside, you should try and navigate the inside! I'm pretty good at reading maps but I swear I stared at the thing for 20 minutes and still couldn't totally figure it out. In fact I didn't know that the EMP and the SFM were connected until I had walked out of the EMP, down the street, into the SFM and then turned a few corners once inside!

Anyways...Here's the outside of the SFM:
Inside was a nerds dream world. I didn't know I wasn't supposed to take pictures inside so I snapped a few (or 30).

Fan created storm trooper armor.
One of the robots from the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle movies (my brother should like that). This was Donatello.
ET puppet.
Yoda replica.
Planet of the Apes monkey/person.
Very cool experience for all my inner nerdom.

Afterwards I took a little walk around the Seattle Center complex and took some pictures of all the flowers and plants.
I think in a previous life I was a nature photographer. I photograph plants *all the time.* I tried to take a picture of myself with the Space Needle in the background but I just looked disgruntled and weird and you couldn't really see the Needle. Plus people were coming and I didn't want to look like a total fool.

After the Space Needle I headed to North Seattle and the neighborhood of Queen Anne. Lovely, lovely, lovely. Beautiful, cottage type houses with gorgeous little lawns. Very posh. I stopped by Hilltop Yarns which was nice. Just a small little house but every corner/bookshelf/desk had yarn popping out of it. I got some really nice locally dyed sock yarn and some Cascade 220 (because I am near the Cascade Mountains, Cascade's birthplace). Unfortunately I had camnesia and forgot to take a picture of the outside. Instead take a look at this beauty, located just a few streets away:
My friend Laurie pointed me to this house. It sits among some plain houses. The house looks like it is hand carved. Simply beautiful and a special treat. Thanks Laurie!

Then I traveled a few blocks to Kerry Park and got to see the best view of the Seattle skyline.
There are tons of post cards with this exact same picture. Apparently Kerry Park and W. Highland street are the place to go to get wicked cool pictures of Seattle. Just down the street is the Parsons Memorial Garden which I stumbled on as I intentionally got myself lost (it's a good way to learn your way around). The flowers are starting to bloom so I had a look inside.
I loved these flowers. They hung in clusters from trees inside the garden.
This plaque reads: A respite for those who see beauty in all things.
I thought it was a lovely saying and looking around you really could see the beauty in everything.
The plaque was on the ground in front of this little bench. I wandered over to take a seat and just happened to look down. I'm glad I decided to stop and rest and even more glad that I decided to aimlessly kick my feet in the gravel.

Here's a picture of my hotel room that I stayed in last night at the Executive Hotel Pacific. The rooms are tiny (which is on par for what I paid) but still nice. It had a vintage feel but in a good way.
You can see how it took me about 30 seconds to spread out and take over.

This morning I took a little trip down to Pike Place Market. I tried to go on Monday night but everything closes at 5 or 6! I saw the Seattle Art Museum with this cool sculpture out front, and it moves!
Here's picture of the Market sign.
I had a picture of where I thought the original Starbucks was (but had moved) but I discovered that the original Starbucks is actually *in* the market itself (and I past it like 3 times and didn't bother to get a picture). The rumors about there being another Starbucks right across the street are false, by the way. Across the street are fish and flower stalls. Now across the street and down about 2 blocks is a Tully's coffee place so maybe that's where the rumors started. I will say that people in Seattle love their coffee. There are about 4 chain stores (including Starbucks) and they are everywhere.

While I was at the market I stopped by the Pike Place Fish Market. That's the place where they throw the fish. They weren't throwing fish today but I did see a Monk fish which was huge and nasty looking.
See, world famous even!
So, that was my day in Seattle. It was busy, a little stressful (learning how to drive in a new city is always fun...), but overall a really good time. Plus I know Seattle loves me. Why? It was in the high 60s and sunny while I was there :) Tomorrow: Olympia.