Due to the fact that I did not have to drive, today was a better day, though walking through Seattle has its own perils - there are a fair number of homeless people who are either drunk or more than a bit muddled. We saw one guy walk out into the street and start yelling at the cars, while another guy walked up to us and told us that he wished he could make us understand. Anyway, back to our actual adventures.
We started the day by fighting our way through breakfast, since the hotel was fairly full with at least one school group and the breakfast room was packed. We then walked the three blocks to the park where the Space Needle is and rode the monorail to downtown Seattle, where we walked down to the Pike Place Market. Even early in the morning, it was fairly busy, which turned out to be because they were having a fair in the market today. By the time we left, it was almost impossible to push a stroller through the throngs of people.
For the first little bit, we just explored. The famous fish stand turned out to be a bit of bust, since it was surrounded by 100 eager tourists and no one who was buying any fish. One of the workers even asked in desperation if anyone wanted to buy fish today. If I lived here, I'm not certain I would shop there - by walking up to the counter, you become the center of attention, with 100 cameras trained on you. As we wandered through the shops, we decided to buy food for supper from the shops, rather than eating in yet another restaurant. Plus, our hotel room has a full kitchen, so we would be able to buy some corn and cook it.
About half way down the main street of the market is the first Starbucks location, which I stopped in and bought some coffee beans and a coffee, just so I could say that I had. I don't know if all Starbucks are like this, but they take your order on one side and then throw your empty cup across the room to the barista that actually makes your coffee and calls out your name when it is done. At the far end of the market they had set up a stage for the fair, and a local all girl band was playing as we walked back into the market to shop for supper. I felt very much like a Seattle cliché - walking through Pike Place Market, drinking Starbucks coffee, while the girls screamed out Celebrity Skin.
We left the market and stopped for lunch at McDonald's, before taking the monorail back to the park and then taking all our stuff back to the hotel room. We then walked back to the park in order to go to the Science Fiction Museum. The museum was extremely cool, but you will just have to take my word for it, since you weren't allowed to take pictures. Sandra did take a picture of the sign for the bathroom, which I will add to the blog, since it is a pretty cool (and geeky) sign. The museum had a lot of displays with the various science fiction books and
authors as well as memorabilia from movies and TV shows. I'll just list a bunch of stuff we saw - the original captain's chair from the Enterprise set, the Enterprise-D model used for filming Next Generation, the Death Star model used for filming Star Wars, an animatronic Donatello, a stormtrooper costume, Corporal Hicks armour and gun from Aliens, the Terminator head and hand from T2, and an entire wall filled with various science fiction weapons (but no lightsaber - and I told Xander we would see one - *sigh*). There were also some interesting multimedia displays, but they were either packed full of geeks or too long to sit and watch with the children, so I skipped most of them. The one was a bunch of computer terminals where you could look up information on every spaceship from every science fiction series. The terminals were packed with people, but they had a huge screen behind them that was showing a looping movie of all the different ships flying past, landing at spacedocks and so on, so I held Xander and watched it go through all the ships once.
I couldn't find anything really interesting to buy in the gift shop, and I was really hoping for a lightsaber so that Xander would stop complaining. Before we left, Xander decided he wanted to go through the Jim Henson temporary display. I carried him through it, but it was mostly drawings and pictures, with just a few Muppets here and there. He didn't even seem very excited when we saw Bert and Ernie, so once we had quickly seen everything, we left. After the museum, we went up to the top of the Space Needle, took some pictures, returned to the ground, bought some ice cream and then returned to the hotel for supper.
We started the day by fighting our way through breakfast, since the hotel was fairly full with at least one school group and the breakfast room was packed. We then walked the three blocks to the park where the Space Needle is and rode the monorail to downtown Seattle, where we walked down to the Pike Place Market. Even early in the morning, it was fairly busy, which turned out to be because they were having a fair in the market today. By the time we left, it was almost impossible to push a stroller through the throngs of people.
For the first little bit, we just explored. The famous fish stand turned out to be a bit of bust, since it was surrounded by 100 eager tourists and no one who was buying any fish. One of the workers even asked in desperation if anyone wanted to buy fish today. If I lived here, I'm not certain I would shop there - by walking up to the counter, you become the center of attention, with 100 cameras trained on you. As we wandered through the shops, we decided to buy food for supper from the shops, rather than eating in yet another restaurant. Plus, our hotel room has a full kitchen, so we would be able to buy some corn and cook it.
About half way down the main street of the market is the first Starbucks location, which I stopped in and bought some coffee beans and a coffee, just so I could say that I had. I don't know if all Starbucks are like this, but they take your order on one side and then throw your empty cup across the room to the barista that actually makes your coffee and calls out your name when it is done. At the far end of the market they had set up a stage for the fair, and a local all girl band was playing as we walked back into the market to shop for supper. I felt very much like a Seattle cliché - walking through Pike Place Market, drinking Starbucks coffee, while the girls screamed out Celebrity Skin.
We left the market and stopped for lunch at McDonald's, before taking the monorail back to the park and then taking all our stuff back to the hotel room. We then walked back to the park in order to go to the Science Fiction Museum. The museum was extremely cool, but you will just have to take my word for it, since you weren't allowed to take pictures. Sandra did take a picture of the sign for the bathroom, which I will add to the blog, since it is a pretty cool (and geeky) sign. The museum had a lot of displays with the various science fiction books and 
authors as well as memorabilia from movies and TV shows. I'll just list a bunch of stuff we saw - the original captain's chair from the Enterprise set, the Enterprise-D model used for filming Next Generation, the Death Star model used for filming Star Wars, an animatronic Donatello, a stormtrooper costume, Corporal Hicks armour and gun from Aliens, the Terminator head and hand from T2, and an entire wall filled with various science fiction weapons (but no lightsaber - and I told Xander we would see one - *sigh*). There were also some interesting multimedia displays, but they were either packed full of geeks or too long to sit and watch with the children, so I skipped most of them. The one was a bunch of computer terminals where you could look up information on every spaceship from every science fiction series. The terminals were packed with people, but they had a huge screen behind them that was showing a looping movie of all the different ships flying past, landing at spacedocks and so on, so I held Xander and watched it go through all the ships once.
I couldn't find anything really interesting to buy in the gift shop, and I was really hoping for a lightsaber so that Xander would stop complaining. Before we left, Xander decided he wanted to go through the Jim Henson temporary display. I carried him through it, but it was mostly drawings and pictures, with just a few Muppets here and there. He didn't even seem very excited when we saw Bert and Ernie, so once we had quickly seen everything, we left. After the museum, we went up to the top of the Space Needle, took some pictures, returned to the ground, bought some ice cream and then returned to the hotel for supper.
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