The third day of ‘Tour Seattle’ is now complete and as expected it didn’t go as expected, but we still had fun through the teeth-chattering cold. The initial plan was the Seattle Aquarium and a one-hour Harbor Cruise. I sure know how to pick a weekend for ‘Tour Seattle’. We’ve received the worse weather of the year…snow, temps in the 20s, wind, fog…
We started the day with a happy surprise…we didn’t have to pay for parking because of the MLK holiday…yea! First stop was Argosy to make sure they were still doing the Harbor Cruise. We didn’t know if the weather would cause them to cancel. Good news…no cancellation. Or wait, that seemed like bad news since it was so freaking cold. We started talking about postponing this part of ‘Tour Seattle’ for another time. It was cold enough on shore; it just didn’t seem like a good day to be on the water. It didn’t take long to convince ourselves that the Harbor Cruise could wait. So, we headed for the Seattle Aquarium.
I hadn’t been to the aquarium for about 10 years. They’ve made quite a few changes. I even got brave and touched some of the sea life in the tide pool. I know, I know…the tide pools are for kids…or, for adults who have an unusual fear of touching slimy things. I couldn’t bring myself to touch the sea cucumber though. Some of my favorites were the octopus, sea horses, all the many varieties of anemones, the always entertaining river otters, and the underwater dome that makes you feel like you are part of their world. But the MOST exciting part was seeing the baby sea otter that was born just two days earlier…oh my gosh…so cute. It was really hard to see him/her and pictures were really difficult. There were aquarium staff/volunteers keeping a very close eye on the new pup and answering everyone’s questions. You won’t be disappointed when you visit the aquarium…unless of course you choose a freezing day (some of the animals are outside) and even then you’ll have a good time.
Since we opted to skip the Harbor Cruise we had time on our hands, so after some contemplation we decided to visit Pike’s Place
Market. We started at the Crumpet Shop. I cannot express how much I LOVE, LOVE this place. Yep, that’s two loves. I found this place years ago on a visit when I still lived in Alaska. I wasn’t too hopeful because they used to be closed on Mondays, but lucky us they are now open seven days a week. If you’ve never had a crumpet you must immediately go to the Crumpet Shop. You’ll never want to eat an english muffin again. We wandered around the market with no particular destination in mind. Best smell of the day award goes to the Piroshky Shop. And, no tour of the market is complete without stopping by the original Starbucks with their original logo (being PC has forced them to move to a less ‘adult’ logo at their other locations). We couldn’t decide where we should eat lunch, but we settled on Pikes Place Brewery. We shared a cheese platter and a meat and cheese platter…everything was local and fantastic.
It was getting late in the afternoon, so we decided to try for a sunset from the Space Needle again. Yesterday when we visited the Space Needle we had the opportunity to visit again for free in the next 24 hours. Rather than getting the car and driving over there, we opted for the Monorail from Westlake Center. The picture perfect sunset evaded us yet again. Oh well, at least we had a great setting for our afternoon mochas.
On the journey back to the car, we got a bit silly with our cameras and played around with neon signs and shutter speed. The results were kind of fun.
Check out some of my pictures: