seattle

The first part of our big summer vacation was a morning flight to Seattle so we could spend the day sight-seeing and catch our cruise ship there the following morning. I don't know how much cousin Jacob knew about Seattle, but he knew about the Space Needle and definitely wanted to see it. We all bought some really over-priced tickets for the observation deck and waited in line to go up.

We had pretty typical Seattle weather for our day in town. It always looked like it could rain at any moment, but it never did.

Pretty views from up in the Needle, and free telescopes were fun for everyone. We looked into getting a dinner reservation in the revolving restaurant just one floor below the observation deck for that evening, but if the observation deck admission price was a little shocking, the restaurant prices were absolutely insane. We made arrangements to meet John's sister Sue and family downtown instead.
We spent quite a while up high, I mean, given the price of those tickets, we were going to stay. They did serve drinks and snacks up there and you could sit inside and get some shelter from the wind.

Back on the ground walked the surrounding plaza area and the kids posed in front of a colorful wall of a "rock music and movie" museum. We then walked inside the lobby to see what that was about, but it looked touristy and boring. We rode the monorail back downtown instead.

The last place we stopped before dinner was the Pike Street fish market. We wandered through the length of it and I told the kids there would be something cool to see there, but as we passed stall after stall of big smelly fish on ice, they doubted that more and more.

 Finally we reached the famous stall where the guys yell and throw the fish to each other, which I think they agreed was something different and it held their attention for a while but a few minutes after we arrived it was time for this stall and all of Pike's Market to close.