The Great Pacific Northwest

Day 4
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Driving up from Mount Rainier on day 3, we arrived in Seattle in the late afternoon and went directly to Pike Place Market. The instant the car door was opened, the kids reacted to the 'odor' of the wet market. We walked around a bit but no one was very impressed so we continued on to Lynnwood, a quiet suburb 15 minutes north of Seattle, and checked into the Hampton Inn. This was later voted the kids' favorite hotel of the trip. For me, it's a toss-up between this and the Holiday Inn at Lillooet North Vancouver. After checking in, we ended the day with a satisfying dinner at Kirirom Cambodian Restaurant in Lynnwood.

The next morning, we decided to visit the Boeing factory in Everett. Yay! The boys found it quite fascinating but the girls were a little blah about it. At one point, Cassie refused to get out of the bus to get up close and personal with a 747 on the production floor. Now, who wouldn't jump at the chance to see a half-built 747? ;-) The dimensions of the building are certainly impressive. Doesn't look very big, does it?

It didn't either in real life, being set all by itself on the vast expanse of Paine Airfield. But the tour guide quoted a bunch of statistics for comparison, including the fact that all of Disneyland fits inside the hangar building with 12 acres to spare for parking! The world's largest building by volume.

We got to see the Dreamliner production line, of course. Can't wait to fly in one!

And this one's my favorite - the modified 747-400 Large Cargo Freighter with a swing tail. The one used to transport Dreamliner parts from all over the world is called "The Dreamlifter".

Lots of cool information about Boeing and its planes on Wikipedia, for anyone who is interested.

Trying out the official junior pilot's vest at the gift store:

Finally, a dose of parting advice from the tour guide: "If it ain't Boeing, I ain't going!"

After an exciting tour at Boeing, we stumbled upon a little gem of a Japanese restaurant that is worth mentioning: Miako Teriyaki in Mukilteo. We started off just ordering some gyoza for a snack, and ended up going back to the counter three times to order some more! Best gyoza I've eaten - positively heavenly :-)

After a successful morning, at least in the boys' books, we drove into downtown Seattle to visit the Seattle Center and the iconic Space Needle. Here we are under the Space Needle. It took many tries to finally get everyone AND the SN in the photo, phew! Some locals sitting around in the plaza were quite unperturbed by the mini commotion we were raising. I guess they're used to this area being flooded by silly tourists :-)

It was a blazing hot day in Seattle, but we walked around a little bit. The Experience Music Project/Science Fiction Museum building is pretty cool.

It was designed by Frank Gehry, who also architected other famous buildings such as the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, Spain and the Walt Disney Concert Hall in downtown Los Angeles.


Here's a view of it with the Space Needle:

We didn't do very much as it was very hot. We thought about watching a movie at the Planetarium but the only show at the time we were there was Kungfu Panda, which we had watched, and thoroughly enjoyed, on Father's Day. But the kids had fun climbing on an outdoor sculpture. Clarence helped the Korean boy in the photo up onto the sculpture. Our two kids had no trouble getting up, the little monkeys :-)

Before leaving downtown Seattle, we ducked into a cafe and enjoyed some ice-cold smoothies. I found some Kinderschokolade (German Easter chocolate eggs with really cool mini-toys inside) but the children are obviously more interested in the strawberry smoothie!


Next stop: Chittenden Locks and the Carl English, Jr. Botanical Gardens. The locks were fun to visit. As it was hot day, there were many private boats of all sizes going through the locks between Lake Washington and Lake Union.



There was a salmon ladder which was teeming with wriggling salmon trying to get upstream! The kids had fun rolling down the grassy slopes of the botanic gardens. We also played hide and seek. Dad was the best at hiding. Unfortunately, that is not a good thing as no one could find him. They started another game, and he was left standing in the middle of a prickly bush for 15 minutes before emerging slightly annoyed and sheepish.

There was a most impressive cedar tree in the garden.

Beautiful, isn't it?



Well, Seattle has been fun but the weather was reportedly cooler in Vancouver, so we decided to skip the Sunday sailing outing at the Seattle Center for Wooden Boats, and instead head up to Vancouver the next morning.

Canada, here we come!