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Blessed sleep! It hadn't been too long since our 3 night stay in San Francisco, but it had been a busy few days since then, and a lot of miles. Good to not have to rush out the door for a change. The hotel we were at was pretty nice, but the continental breakfast left something to be desired. Pretty slim on the choices! Our plan for the day was to go see the Seattle Aquarium, then go to the Olympic sculpture garden, and then head off to the Seattle Center, which had more than a few things to see.
The aquarium was pretty cool, if a little small. Lots of things in that small space though! First were some river otters, but they were still asleep. After then were some seals and then almost 10 sea otters, very cool! They were very playful, and then as we made our way around, you got to see the underside of their area, seeing them swin around underwater. Nice! They also had a good collection of tropical fish, some I'd never seen before, and also northwestern seabirds, and even jellyfish, in a pretty cool circular tank that you walked under. There was also a very large dome tank, with windows all around you. Never seen a starfish so big.
The sculpture garden was cool and fun. Cool for the neat idea of it in the first place, but also fun for some of the more descriptive explanations for the modern art. Some looked cool, and I could take it as it was, but some were a little more out there, and the description just seemed like they tried to hard to justify it. Just say you liked making it and be done! My favorite was probably one that used quite a few different objects to spell out 'Love & Loss', but you had to step back from it to see. There were also some pretty cool eyes that were also seats.
The Seattle center was actually pretty close to our hotel, so we walked there. First we checked out the Science Fiction museum, which of course was great fun for Dena and me. Lots of really cool items, including one of the dinosaur puppets used to animate the T-Rex in Jurassic Park, a full-size queen alien from Aliens, and many different guns and weapons from lots of movies, even Bruce Willis' handgun from the Fifth Element. Next door was the experience music project, which was cool, but not quite what we expected. It had a lot of neat exhibits, but I though it was going to be more of th science of music and sound rather than the history of music and bands. Oh well, still pretty neat!
We managed to get a military discount for the Space Needle, which saved a few bucks. Quite the view from up top! We had pretty decent weather, but there were clouds in the distance, so most of the mountains were obscured. Still very cool! I think it's the tallest manmade structure I've ever been in, since I haven't really done any of the big skyscrapers around, like NYC. We went ahead and took a trip on the monorail after getting back down, since it was pleasantly cheap for a roundtrip. Everything is expensive here!
As a pleasant surprise, the downtown end of the monorail took us to a mall, which was great since we were starving at this point. Smart of them, but handy nonetheless! We found a cool jewelry shop for Dena, and then also picked up some CDs for the road as well: some Lacuna Coil and Cirque du Soleil's KA, that we saw in Vegas. We really wanted the new Porcupine Tree, but that wouldn't come out till the 24th. Alas!
After the return trip back to Seattle Center, we limped our way back to the hotel, since being cooped up in a car for so long had made walking so much a lot of work! Since we had a late lunch we just had some treats from Starbucks for the evening, and then took it easy for the rest of the night. Time to drive again tomorrow.
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