Over President’s day weekend my friends and I decided to head out to Seattle and meet up in person for the first time in years. It was great to see and hang out with them once again. Oh yeah, Seattle was also good. All of our mornings we damp, with us getting light hail turned rain on the first morning, and snow on our last day. Thankfully the clouds usually cleared up or at least dried out before noon.
Our first big plan was the Seattle Aquarium. While it was smaller than my favorite, the Monterey Bay Aquarium, it was also a lot less packed! It was wet that morning and I felt lazy that day so I did not bring my DSLR. All of these fish pics are from my old-ish phone. I was pleasantly surprise it was able to hold its own, especially in the low light conditions! I feel like there is still a drop in picture quality so for this reason I do not feel right charging for these images. Feel free to download and use them for your own personal use.
Giant Pacific Octopus. Yes, they are indeed giants
Small kid as scale
This lazy fish is one of my spirit animals
little angry puff
Our big plans for one of the other days was to go to the Space Needle and some of the museums nearby. Going up the Space Needle was pretty awesome and the views from up there were nice, considering how the clouds were parting ways everywhere except for Mt Rainier. I must be spoiled because the Space Needle is not the higher observation tower I’ve been up. I’ve been up the Strat in Vegas and the Tower of the Americas in San Antonio and it turns out both are taller (and newer) than the space needle.
After coming back down from the top of the needle we swung by the Chihuly glass museum. I had heard of this artist before but never really looked into their art outside of the random few pieces on display in random museums I have been to before. There were a few pieces on display that I really liked, and others where the room full of pieces combined together to make something wonderful. I do have to be honest, there were at times where it felt like Chihuly just made the same glass work piece multiple times in a row, trying to get the same results every time but not quite getting there because molten glass can’t be easy to work with, and then grouped up all of the like pieces together until there was something that could be considered pretty. We also saw the end of a glass blowing demonstration by an art student. At first it looked like he was blowing a small vase but then he sucked away the air inside the glass bubble to create a double lined bowl. Only non-commercial photography was allowed in the museum so even though I had my DSLR this time around I once again am offering these images for free. Feel free to download and use them for your own personal use.
The moment the sphere turned into a double lined bowl
I'm Batman!
This was not one of those vacations where every second is planned ahead and accounted for. We knew we wanted to go to the aquarium, space needle, and Chihuly museum but that was about it. Our days consisted of grabbing some donuts and coffee at Mighty Os, the nearest coffee and donut place to our AirBnb. It was right across from an Alfa Romeo and Maserati dealership which must have done some Ferrari stuff in the past based on the sign over their service shop. Our days usually ended with going to U:Don for dinner almost every night because it was cheap, delicious, and never had a line. This was followed with ice cream at Molly Moons, with their Yeti flavor quickly becoming our favorite.
We spent the remainder of our time meandering around Seattle. The Public Markets by the harbor were pretty cool though it was super easy to get lost in the tiny, weird hallways. While we did ride-share the longer distances we still ended up doing a lot of walking. We were so tired one day that we did little else but eat and nap. That was a great day.
My buddy helped design this bridge
a Ham and Cheese pastry
The hail from the first day
Snow on the last day
The Twin Sisters
Mt St Helens