More Pictures along the way - April 29th - Seattle

Today is Tuesday, April 29th, our last day before we fly home.

We decided to go see the Science Fiction Museum which is at the base of the Space Needle. The structure is very modern. It was designed by Frank O. Gehry. He is the same guy that designed the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, Spain. The Science Fiction Museum opened in 2004. The Experience Music Project which is in the same ultramodern building opened in 2000.




























We also visited the Space Needle while there and took a lot of pictures of the skyline.

Diane with West Seattle in the background.

After the museums and Space Needle, we decided to tour Seattle in a Duck. They are the amphibeous vehicles from World War 2 that can run on land or sea.
While cruising the streets of Seattle in the Duck, we went by Seattle Art Museum. Outside the museum is the "Hammering Man". He is 42 feet tall and was created by Jonathan Borofsky. The sculpture is made of aluminum. The left arm holds a hammer and goes up and down. It is active every day except Labor Day. The picture is not great as it was taken through the window of the Duck.
While on Lake Union, we went by Gas Works Park. The picture below is of one of the gasification units that was used to manufacture gas from coal but when they started importing natural gas, it became obsolete.
This is the "Sleepless in Seattle" floating house from the movie. It was put on the market while we were in Seattle at an asking price of $2.5 million. Diane and I decided it would be too small for us so we didn't even bother to go look at it... Oh yeah, and it was way out of our price range.
The skyline from the lake was quite nice.
We say a lot of floating houses and house boats while traveling the lake in the Duck.




























As we left the lake, the driver took a quick pass through the Fremont District but only showed a couple of the sights. We left Fremont via the Fremont Bridge and headed back to the Space Needle where the tour ended. The picture below shows the Fremont Bridge, a draw bridge, opening just after we crossed it. This apparently happens frequently during the day.



Unfortunately, this is the end of the blog and our vacation. Tomorrow, Wednesday the 30th, we fly back home.

More PIctures along the way - April 28th - Seattle

Today, Monday the 28th , we start to see Seattle on our own. Our first stop is the Fremont section. I read about a Troll under the Bridge and Diane found the details on the web.

They have renamed the street in front of the troll as Troll Ave. It is actually under the Aurora Bridge at 36th St.

Diane with the Troll. In his left hand he is holding a real Volkswagon Beetle. You can see the tire in the picture at the bottom left.Fremont has a lot of oddities. Here is the Rocket Ship they reclaimed and attached to the side of a building. The rocket ship was a circa 1950 cold war rocket fuselage attached to AJ's Surplus in Bell Town. The town rescued it and after several years found a home for it attached to the building in the picture.The Rocket bears the Fremont crest and motto, "De Libertas Quirkas"—which means "Freedom to be Peculiar.
Fremont also has it's own statue of Lenin which was created by Emil Venkov, a Slavic artist. It took him 10 years to complete it and it was installed in Poprav, Slovakia in in 1988. It was found in Slovakia by an American veteran teaching in Poprad. Lewis Carpenter found the sculpture lying face down after it was toppled in the 1989 Revolution. He mortgaged his house to acquire the sculpture and brought it back to Issaquah. It is sited in Fremont temporarily for viewing and sale.
We stopped for coffee in a small coffee house, Stickman Coffee, on an alley in the Fremont district. The coffee art in the picture below was one of several hanging in the coffee shop.
This sculpture "Waiting for the Interurban" has a dog behind the people. If you click on it and get the larger size picture, you will see the dog has a human face. We were told by our tour driver that it was the face of the councilman that opposed the sculpture being there but on the web, the rumor has it that the face on the dog is that of another local legend, Arman Napoleon Stepanian. The unofficial Mayor of Fremont in the early years and the "Christopher Columbus" of curbside recycling
This is a picture of sculpture on a building in Fremont. Not sure what it represents or why it is there but I thought it was cool.
This is the front of a shop just down the hill from the rocket. I just liked the colors and wood.

A view from Magnolia (where Mike and Leah live) looking across to the point where Alki Lighthouse is on the tip. We headed over there after taking this picture.
View of Seattle skyline from West Seattle on the way to the Alki Lighthouse.

This is a view back towards Magnolia from West Seattle/Alki. I just thought it was cool that we could take a picture back to where we had just been.We got to Alki Light Station to find out that it was closed and only open June to August.
I was bound and determined to get a picture anyway and finally went down the road to where I could get to the beach and then walked back along the beach to the lighthouse. It was behind a fence so I climbed up on the rocks on the beach and got this shot over the fence.
Here is Diane sitting on the logs on the beach when I was coming back from getting the picture of the lighthouse. This is where we found beach access.

After the lighthouse, we headed out to Snoqualmie Falls. We were going to go farther east to Roslyn where they filmed the TV show "Northern Exposure" but we would have had to go through Snoqualmie pass which is over 6000 feet and there was supposed to be snow at that altitude. We decided that discretion was the better choice and went to the falls instead.
They are really quite nice. There is a hotel there and a power generating station. They are really an amazing sight.


After the falls, we decided to head up to Woodinville and do some wine tasting. Michael had mentioned that Chateau Ste. Michelle was pretty good so decided to check it out. He was right. I did not realize that it was the oldest winery and one of the largest in Washington. They actually own a number of the other wine brands in Washington. We did some tasting. The woman doing the pouring was great. She suggested a couple of things and even went to the other building to get us a wine to taste.

After the tasting, we headed back to the hotel. We had to go through Redmond but decided not to stop at Microsoft. I figured that since Bill Gates retired, it wasn't worth the stop. Tomorrow we will wrap up the vacation with a final day of sightseeing in Seattle and trying to figure out how to fit all the loose stuff from the trunk and back seat of the car into the suitcases for the trip home.

Seattle: April 29

April 29

Seattle

We discovered this morning that it is illegal to ship wine from the state of Washington except from a winery, so our pack and ship excursion was sort of in vain. We have three bottles we will need to bury in the center of suitcases and hope the TSA inspectors don’t break them. We have not had good luck with them in the past.

We headed for the area of the city around the Space Needle to check out some of the tourist spots. First we went through the Science Fiction Museum.


Being a Sci-Fi Fan, I had looked forward to seeing it, but it was a little disappointing. There were too many exhibits that consisted of words on a wall with mounted books and magazines.

The actual exhibits of costumes, people, and props from movies and television were more interesting when they were the real thing as the reproductions were sometimes not done too well or were just plain hokey. However, I really liked seeing Robbie the Robot from “Forbidden Planet” and the robot (which never did have a name) from the original TV show “Lost in Space”. Unfortunately they were in the same exhibit together and were set up so that they were talking to each other, in argumentative fashion. I ignored that part.

The robot section and the alien section were the best. Some of the interactive parts were good, especially the one where you could get information of different fictional planets.

I was pleased to see “Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy” was well represented as it is a favorite of mine. Babel fish were listed as one of the communication devices along with the Star Wars communicators.

Since we could go on the same ticket we also did “Music Experience” in the same building. It was OK. We loved the music of the 60’s section, especially the displays and A/V’s of “Louie, Louie”. I had not realized it was recorded by every group in existence at the time. Some of the costumes and guitars on display were interesting.

The history of music in the Seattle area was fascinating; though we did chuckle when we came to the area depicting what Tom always called (to Rob’s chagrin) “alternatives to music”.

No pictures were allowed inside the galleries of either one, so I have only pictures of the outside of the venues—very unique architecture, but appropriate.


Both museums were built by Paul Allen and some of the displays are part of his collection. We heard that some of the Music Experience displays are part of Steve Ballmer’s personal collection, but not sure if that is factual.

Next we did what every Seattle tourist must, and went up the Space Needle.

The sun was out, but it was too cloudy over the mountains with the approaching storm to see the far mountains. Nevertheless, it is always fun to have a view from so high up (over 600 feet). You can walk around the entire circle and see Seattle and its environs from all angles. Tom took pictues from every side. I managed to catch him in a moment without the camera in front of his face.

The small point of land to the right and above the peninsula in the picture is the location of the lighthouse we searched for yesterday (Alki).

Our final tourist activity was to ride the Ducks. These are 1940’s era amphibious vehicles, painted garishly with their logo, that give a land and water tour of Seattle. It was fabulous even though it was raining part of the tour.

Most of the Duck tour pictures were taken through rain splattered plastic windows, so are not the clearest. When the rain let up the captain tried to open the plastic shades, but the old people on board complained about the cold, so we only had brief times to take clear pictures. Two old ladies wore rain hats the entire trip, as they were sure the roof would leak and they would get their hair wet. They were ditzy but fun—from Nebraska. There was also a couple from Danville, PA, which we thought was kind of cool.

Here are some various sights seen about the city, on land:

ancient metallic bamboo forest (street sculpture):

A uniquely named cookie shop:

Coffee shop:

An aluminum tree from the Olympic Sculpture Gardens:

Luckily the rain stopped while we were on Lake Union. I loved the lake portion of the Duck tour.

Entering the Lake Union:

Seattle has about 500 houseboats and floating homes. The houseboats are self contained, and must be pumped out. People have converted all sorts of vessels into homes. We saw old tugboats and other conversions. Really neat.

The floating homes ranged from the original shack-type dwellings, which used to be housing for the poor of Seattle (certainly no longer!)

to elegant mansions floating next to their sailboats.

We also saw the “Sleepless in Seattle” home, which went on the market while we were visiting Seattle. The price is 2 ½ million dollars. It was purchased right after the movie came out for $800,000. The first twenty four hours it was on the market this time, fifty realtors and twelve prospective owners toured the house. We didn’t think we would make the pre-qual, so we didn’t try to go through it!

Aurora Bridge—home of the Fremont troll (under the right hand side beyond the picture):

Space Needle from Lake Union:

We saw the Washington State women’s crew out for practice:

This boathouse is actually a functional boat. The owner could not get permission to put up a building, so she had a huge floating-house-type boat constructed on the site. It has running lights and engines that could (but don’t) actually move it. If you have enough money you can get around the rules.

This is “Revolution” the restaurant, which is part of the Sci-Fi Museum/Music Experience complex,where we had a late lunch and warmed up with excellent coffee.

Seattle is such a wonderful place to sample coffee.

I can't believe this is our last day. Five weeks have flown by. We have accumulated such unbelievably great memories. What an adventure!

I'm sure our friends and family will be pleased to hear there are thousands of pictures (no exaggeration). Digital cameras are dangerous in some people's hands.

Postscript:

The wine survived the trip just fine.