Seattle--9-11

I slept like the dead and woke up about 8:30 Sunday Morning. Carren, Max and I were out the door and off to downtown Seattle before 10am.

Our first stop was the Dale Chihuly museum. Words and pictures will never do justice to these magnificent works of art. I walked around completely awed. Each room seem to hold something more beautiful than the last one. I took a ton of pictures. There was both an indoor and outdoor installation plus a greenhouse that housed an enormous piece suspended from the ceiling. Even Max, who is 4 years old, was fascinated by the colorful displays.

This is a panel from the ceiling in one display

This piece fills an entire room. It's so big --like a life size garden of glass. 

This is a closer view of the 'garden'

 The artwork outside was very cool.

I just loved the way they landscaped the areas to make it seem like the pieces were just growing there. 

From what I understand, there is also nighttime admittance and the outdoor pieces would look totally different. Unfortunately, with such a short time to spend in the city, there was no nighttime viewing for us.

Looking up from the Garden

From there, we rode the monorail to the waterfront. We cut through the market and down six stories or so to walk along the seawall. We boarded a boat for an hour long cruise around the sound. It was just long enough and gave me the opportunity to take some pictures of the skyline.

Believe it or not, those little shapes sitting on the round thing attached to that barge are sea lions. California sea lions. We saw sea lions on three separate concrete things just lounging in the sun!

I will say, I’ve never seen so much colorfully dyed hair in one place in all my life! I was sort of jealous! I would love to be able to have some of those bright colors in my own hair.  Seattle definitely has its own vibe.

As we were walking, there were 2 adult males waking in front of us: 1-smoking a joint, 2-engaging in very amorous displays of affection. We’re talking hands inside the back of the pants squeezing and also doing a bit of grinding and serious deep kissing. And finally 3-one of the men had a prosthetic leg. Max was watching all of this intently from his stroller. And I do mean intently. He didn’t seem to care anything about the same sex make-out, or the weird smell of the cloud of smoke we were walking through. Nope—it was what happened to that guy’s leg? And it was of course, said quite loudly.

Carren shushed him but I was thinking we should have just let him ask the guy. After all, he was wearing shorts, and was very comfortable doing those other things in public… what the hell was a little question like “what happened to your leg?”  But I am not his Mom. Carren did tell me he asked his Dad all about it when we got home. Funny how kids store information like that. Because we saw and did a lot of other cool things but that is what stuck with him. LOL

We walked through the Pike’s Place Market. OMG I would be broke if I lived there near all that fresh fish and seafood. There were shrimps bigger than any I’ve ever seen. And the crab legs… OMG I did control myself though and only bought a jar of local clover honey. It is very, very good. I had some in my tea last night!

The flowers were gorgeous!!!

We also stopped for some lunch at a restaurant along the water and Carren and I shared crab stuffed mushrooms and a huge salad with strawberries, pecans, feta and a few other goodies thrown in.

We rode the monorail back and then went to the top of the Space Needle. It had cleared up quite a bit since earlier in the day and the views were stunning.

By that time, Max had had enough. He was really good the whole day, but he walked quite a bit and was ready for the stroller. We got to the car and left the parking garage. I would say we were maybe three blocks into the journey home and he was OUT cold in his car seat.  He is so freakin cute, I can’t stand it. I won’t publish any pictures of him, but take my word for it. Blonde hair, blue eyes and a devilish personality. And the best part, about an hour into our day he was holding my hand when we walked around.

I had forgotten how 4 year olds like to talk and ask questions. There was a constant monologue pretty much the whole day—only silenced when he had food in his mouth. What a sweetie!  At one point he said to me, "You need to wash your hair." I said I did wash it this morning. He was insisting I had not. Well, finally we discovered he had never met anyone with curly hair. He thought it was messed up from sleeping!!!!!

TTFN