2008 June 17 - Seattle, WA

Seattle's Space Needle

06/17/2008
- nice sleep, comfortable room with a TV
- inc. breakfast, tea and oatmal for me; not much for Vegans
- call mothers' and check-in
- head to Klondike Gold Rush National Historical Park, nice except for the motion activated exhibits, every time you breathed the sound would start up again, ugh ... after hearing the same presentation 4 times in a row, you'd get tired and walk away before you'd finished reading all the information
- as we were looking at a map to get an address for the Underground Tour, a couple walking down the street asked us if we were lost and needed help - to which we replied "Not really, we're just looking for an address, we know it is close by" ... as they both work for the local fire department, and we just happened to be in front of an older building of theirs housing some antique equipment inside we struck up a conversation and got an inpromtu tour through the future Fire Department Museum in downtown Seattle, neat, highly recommended trip with horse drawn and motorized engines

- Onto the Underground Tour with our guide Gael, neat gal ... she's saving up for an electric bike
- Underground is recommended for a less sanitized version of history
- they have interesting exhibits at the end of the tour

- we then walked to the monorail, which wasn't running, and Bill was so hungry he willingly walked to the food court in the mall ... where we found a delicious Meditteranean Restaurant where we each got wonderful meals (we haven't been able to enjoy good middle eastern food since our local joint turned into a buffet)

- when we exited, the monorail was running and we rode it to the Science Fiction Museum ... highly recommended for geeks of all ages ... we spent hours in this
- since the music museum was included with the SFM tickets, we wandered over, and became totally unimpressed; to clarify, we like the mechanics behind a piece, the reason why ... the Music Museum is more for aspiring musicians ... which does NOT describe either BH or myself
- interesting note from BH, he said the men's RR in the Science Fiction Museum was the cleanest he'd ever seen "cleaner than most kitchen's" was his comment, I didn't notice a particularly clean women's RR, which just goes to show what a difference in normal activities we all experience daily
- monorail back to start point and we start walking back to the hotel to pack, hoping to catch a bus in the 'free' area, but we never came across one that worked for us (we definitely need an expansive bus schedule)
- hit the hotel, do most packing for the morning, change clothes, and head back to Typhoon for dinner ... yum
- walk off some dinner along Puget sound
- BH really wanted to ride the ferry again, back and forth, but we just missed the 9 o'clock and would have to wait another 35 minutes for the next ferry and then double the crossing time and it was just too late
- BH got a Maxpedition Falcon pack as an early anniversary present, he reports that he is 'almost' ready to give his approval. I've been a bit jealous, he's got a neat multi-compartment pack, and I've got a twenty year old gregory pack with three large compartment where stuff gets lost