A Whirlwind of Activity…and Still No Sharks

Today was our last full day in Seattle. We still had a number of places we wanted to go, so we were on a tight schedule and knew we would only have a couple of hours at each stop. First up on our list for the day was the aquarium. Malia has been fixated on sharks this entire vacation. Every time we see water, she asks where the sharks are, where the sharks live, why can’t we see the sharks, etc. As such, she was super excited about the aquarium. The Seattle aquarium is located on a pier and has an open system with the ocean which means the water and wildlife in the wild is also in the aquarium. That was super neat but the aquarium here is actually bigger. We saw a variety of fish, animals and bird. My favorite was the sea otters. They are about four times the size of the river otters we can see here. Nathan, who has toyed with the idea of being a marine biologist, took about a million pictures. Malia took a bunch as well. We enjoyed ourselves, but unfortunately, we didn’t see any sharks. Malia did find a stuffed shark in the gift shop, but they were the only sharks in the aquarium.

Not surprisingly, this kid is being a total goofball again. Malia is very proud that she took this picture.

We picked up clam chowder from Ivar’s (Did I mention that I really, really loved the food there?) and after lunch we were off on our next adventure. What we did not know was that the two hours we had allotted for the Pacific Science Center was not even close to enough time. The center had three separate buildings and was jam packed with interesting things and fun hands on learning. There was a special exhibit of art created entirely with Legos and fans that we are, we couldn’t pass that up. There were Lego renditions of famous artworks and sculptures as well as new works created by the artist. It really was amazing.

This is all Lego, really.

  

We also went into the butterfly pavilion which was great. There were a large variety of butterflies living in the habitat and the feeding areas were a great place to see a bunch of them. They were flutter around and land on whatever was handy, including people. Matthew had a butterfly land on his head and when we were done, we had to be checked by an employee to make sure we didn’t have any hitchhikers as we left the area.

Malia loved all the things she could touch and play with. She was especially fond of the ginormous sheets of bubbles she made.

She was brave enough to touch an actual brain, although I think this face expresses perfectly how she felt about it:

I wish we could have spent more time, but we were burning daylight and still had two stops. Next up was the EMP, which is a pop culture museum. There was a fantasy and science fiction exhibit that was fun for all of us. There were costumes and props from a variety of films including the Wizard of Oz, The Princess Bride, Star Wars, The Lord of the Rings, Ghostbusters, Gremlins, etc. We saw a dalek and a cyberman from Doctor Who. I read the letter from the publisher to Terry Brooks accepting The Sword of Shannara for publication as well as the first several pages from Brooks’ in progress manuscript of the book. For t.v. and movie junkies, it was really cool!

There was also a special exhibit that was all about Star Trek in its various incarnations. Daniel totally geeked out about that one. The exhibit included costumes, props, set pieces and even an area where you could join the action in a short film, which the kids thought was neat. In our allotted time, we were able to see everything there that we wanted and were pleased that it was such a fun stop.

Our one disappointment for the day was that we weren’t able to go to the top of the Space Needle. By the time we got there, the next available times to go up were at 10:00 p.m. We still had dinner to eat and needed to pack up so we can hit the road in the morning and just couldn’t wait that long. So overall we had a great day, super busy but fun.