Tuesday, December 12, 2006

Portland/Seattle sight-seeing


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Originally uploaded by sweber4507.


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Originally uploaded by sweber4507.


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Originally uploaded by nojam75.


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Originally uploaded by nojam75.


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Originally uploaded by nojam75.


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Originally uploaded by nojam75.

Scott's sister, Lacey, visited us this weekend. She has visited Portland before when Scott first moved to town, so we decided to go to Seattle. I haven't entertained very many people from out of town before, so I'm not quite sure what is really interesting or worthwhile for people to see. Also, the weather has been rainy, so that kills many of the outdoorsy sighting seeing like the Columbia Gorge. However, I think we had a good time. Here are some of the highlights:

  • McMenamins St Johns Theater & Pub: (see prior post)
  • Science Fiction Museum and Hall of Fame, Seattle: We started our weekend in Seattle at Paul Allen's Sci-Fi museum inside the hideous Frank Gehry building at the Seattle Center. Outside of Star Trek and maybe Star Wars, I know very little about science fiction, so much of the museum seems obscure. Although Scott and Lacey were excited to see the alien from Aliens. While not as interesting as Star Trek: The Experience in Vegas, it was neat to see Captain Kirk's original captain's chair. They also had the scale model of the original series sets that were used for planning the production.
  • Space Needle: This was a great time of year to do the touristy Space Needle. There were no lines like when we visited last summer.
  • Monorail: A ridiculously short transportation system, the monorail is still a fun excuse to ride the short distance downtown.
  • Pike Place Market: We were too late to see any fish throwing, but we did spend some time at a comic book store and did see the original Starbucks store. The line was too long at the original Starbucks store, but we did manager to visit two other Starbucks earlier that day.
  • Dilettante Chocolates: In the Capital Hill neighborhood, we made sure Lacey experienced our favorite tiramis. Soooo gooood.
  • Elliott Bay Book Co.: On Sunday morning while we waited for the aquarium to open, we had coffee at the Elliott Bay Book Co.'s cafe which is supposedly the inspiration for the coffee shop on Frasier. However, I don't think they promote this association.
  • Seattle Aquarium: The aquarium fed the octopuses chicken drumsticks while we were there. We noticed that all the kids would scream "Dory!" whenever they saw the familiar blue fish.
  • Sungari Pearl: Back in Portland, we ordered Chinese take-out which allowed Lacey more chopstick practice.
  • Portland Art Museum: Scott and Lacey saw the ancient Egypt exhibit at the art museum.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Now wait a minute, nephew. The "ridiculously short" monorail you talked about was my main means of transportation when I lived in Seattle! I would walk from my apartment on Queen Anne Hill to the monorail and ride it downtown, where I would walk to my office. Walking up and down those hills kept me in shape just as much as any gym!

Norm! said...

I forgot you lived in Seattle, Auntie.

When we rode the monorail on Saturday, one rider/tourist asked, "this is it?", when the ride ended.

It's too bad voters ended the monorail expansion plan last year. Monorail is clearly the wave of the future.