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September 02, 2003
A Nice Place to Visit...
...but I don't think I'd want to live in Seattle. Back from a weekend there that included a trip to the Woodland Park Zoo, Seattle Aquarium, and, of course, the Space Needle.
Hari Krishna Exhibit on the Waterfront
The aquarium's pretty nice. We got to watch a puffin feeding and managed to get fairly close to some sleeping sea otters. The hands-on area compares favorably to the Oregon Coastal Aquarium in Newport, but I think the OCA has the overall edge. Neither has much on Chicago's Shedd Aquarium.
Sea Otter at the Seattle Aquarium
The Woodland Park Zoo is probably the nicest I've been to since The Brookfield Zoo, which is near Chicago. the Oregon Zoo here in Portland is nice, but Woodland Park's habitat areas are much nicer and seem a lot more comfortable for the animals. The primates, in particular, seem to have better homes.
Komodo Dragon at the Zoo
The Space Needle was one of those "might as well" sort of things. You go up, look around, and go back down with an elevator that opens up in the gift shop.
Seattle from the Space Needle
We added two pennies to our "smashed pennies for $.50" collection, too.
Smashed Pennies
We also went to the Seattle Ikea store, which was our first time in an Ikea. No pictures from there: it was overwhelming. Some of the habitat showcases they've set up look like the illustration to a caption that begins with "In the future, when we've fled our homeworld in giant space arks..." and some of them look like the executive officer's quarters on a nuclear submarine. The place was jammed with college students outfitting their dorm rooms, and it had the largest concentration of Old Navy t-shirts I think I've ever seen in my life. The signage deliberately obfuscates the locations of the exits, too. We bought two lamps, anyhow.
With the exception of a brief sojourn at McChord AFB in 1995 (I was trapped in an Air Force guest house for three days waiting for a cargo plane headed to Ft. Bragg) this was my first visit to Seattle. Not a bad place, but I like Portland's less cluttery feel better.
obMcChordStrandingOf1995Recollection: The only thing on the news channels was the Million Man March. One of the speakers said "We didn't come here to pin the tail on the donkey. We came here to pin the tail on the honkey."
Posted by mph at September 2, 2003 07:31 PM
Comments
Did you attempt Bumbershoot?
Posted by: Cristina at September 3, 2003 01:21 AM
We walked by Bumbershoot and looked down on it from the Space Needle, but we didn't go in. It looked like a madhouse.
Posted by: mph at September 4, 2003 07:38 AM