Seattle Vacation

Robert and I just got back from Seattle for his birthday. It was so much fun! We spent the night at Brandon and Micheal's house which was just a quick 15 minute bus ride from downtown. They were so nice to let us stay, and it saved us a lot of money that we would have spent on a hotel or other lodgings in the area. Seattle is an expensive city! One of the top ten most expensive in the US, according to this article. It was good staying with Brandon and Michael, though, because not only did we save a lot of money but I got to catch up with them and Robert got to meet them. They are such good guys, and we had a lot of laughs. Especially when we played Cards Against Humanity (description of the game here) with another couple; we were up until the wee hours of the morning laughing away.

Since I'm a huge nerd and I like things organized, I made an itinerary for while we were there:

Friday:
11:45 AM         Arrive in Seattle (5th Ave S & S King St, Seattle, WA 98104)
12:00 PM          Head to Brandon + Michaels    

2:00 PM            Dale Chihuly "Garden and Glass" exhibit (305 Harrison St, Seattle, WA 98109)

TBD                 Jurassic Park 3D/IMAX at PSC

 Sat:
10:00 AM         EMP Museum (325 5th Avenue N Seattle, WA 98109)/ Open until 5PM
                        Pacific Science Center (200 Second Ave North Seattle, WA 98109)/ Open until 6PM
TBD                 Dinner with Michael and Brandon
 

Sunday:
Pikes Place Market (85 Pike St. Seattle, Washington 98101)Seattle “Great Wheel” (1301 Alaskan Way, Seattle, WA) 

1:30 PM                Check in at Bolt Bus (5th Ave S & S King St, Seattle, WA 98104)
2:00 PM                Departure
5:35 PM                Arrival in PDX

We rode the Bolt Bus up, which was both Robert and my first time riding it. Not a bad experience at all. They have wifi, which is nice, and it's just a straight shot there. They have a restroom in the back if you need it at all. When we got to Seattle we used an app that's nothing less than amazing: Hop Stop. If you don't have it, you need it now. You put in the address of where you want to go and it tells you the quickest way and lets you pick how you want to travel (bus, train, metro, etc). 

On Friday we went to the Dale Chihuly Garden and Glass exhibit. I hadn't heard about the artist beforehand, but Robert introduced me to some of his work online. It's featured all over the world and he's become quite renowned. I took the following photographs on my phone (and they didn't turn out bad at all): 

The art was really beautiful. It is all blown glass, and it showed the different periods that Chihuly had gone through. Rober's favorite piece was the Sun. He has the pictures of the sun on his camera and since I don't have those yet I stole a photo offline: 

It turns out that we actually missed Chihuly coming to Seattle and doing a book signing by one week. We didn't actually know about that beforehand, but had he been there that same weekend that we were there that would have been cool. I don't think that Robert is enough of a fan to want to go up next weekend as well. lol.

Later that night we went and saw Jurassic Park in 3D at the Pacific Center IMAX theater. We had already seen it in 3D down in Portland, but since we had the option of seeing it on the IMAX screen we wanted to do that too. I wasn't allowed to see it in theaters when I was a child (boo hoo hoo), so of course I jumped at the chance to do it now. It's such an amazing movie! Now I can say that I saw it on the big screen and the IMAX screen! I'm not a huge fan of 3D movies, but this one didn't look bad in 3D at all. I know it's just a huge money making ploy, but sometimes I get suckered in. And when it's a film as good as this one, I'm not afraid to say I jumped at it. 

The next day we went to the EMP museum for a couple of shows. The first one that we went to was 'Can't Look Away: The Lure of Horror Films'. It was awesome! It listed 100 of the top horror movies that someone should see and provided clips from most of them. It had stations where directors had been interviewed for the project and props from various movies interspersed through the exhibit. There was a 'scream station', where you could get your photo taken while you screamed your loudest in the little booth. Below are the photos that Robert and I took. I really think that his turned out better because I'm smiling a bit in mine: 

The props that they had were very varied with the films that they pulled them from. There were selections from films that I had never seen and then some of my favorites. I literally gasped when I saw two different ones from 'Buffy the Vampire Slayer'.

This is the infamous axe from Stanley Kubrick's 'The Shining'. 

Face-hugger from 'Alien'. This is the kind that attacked Sigourney Weaver's character. 

The 'Book of Ascension' off 'Buffy the Vampire Slayer' 

"Mr. Pointy" off 'Buffy the Vampire Slayer' 

They had lots of other props there, including a full suit of the alien from 'Aliens', then stuff from the 'Saw' franchise, 'Texas Chainsaw Massacre', etc. We spent probably two hours in the exhibit overall. I thought that it was very well done and we were enthralled the entire time. 

Next we walked over to the 'Icons of Science Fiction' exhibit. Both the Horror and Sci-Fi exhibits were done be guest curators, so the feel was different. The description of the exhibit was: 

Featuring iconic artifacts from sci-fi literature, film, television, and art, including an Imperial Dalek from Doctor Who, the command chair from the classic television series Star Trek, and Neo’s coat from The Matrix Reloaded.

It was a lot smaller than the horror exhibit, but since different people were doing them I should have expected them to be different. Initially I didn't know that it was different guest curators. I was totally nerding out when I was seeing different pieces there. A few of the pieces included:

 Lieutenant Uhura's uniform off the original 1966 'Star Trek' series. 

Captain Kirk's captain's chair off the original 1966 'Star Trek' series. The furry balls are Tribbles, off the episode 'The Trouble with Tribbles' (which I remember watching as a child).

The headpiece worn by David Prowse in 'Star Wars: Return of the Jedi'. How awesome is that?! 

Darth Vader's lightsaber in 'Star Wars' 

Yoda's pendant and walking stick from both 'Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back' and 'ROTJ'. 

Me with Yoda's walking stick and pendant. Nerding out hardcore, as you can see! 

The original 'Superman' costume. Very insteresting to see how they've progressed through the ages. 

Data's uniform. Data is from 'Star Trek: The Next Generation'. 

Teddy from 'Artificial Intelligence'. It's a very good movie but it makes my cry like a baby every time. I saw Teddy and knew immediately who he was without the caption even needing to tell me. Robert hasn't seen the film so he didn't recognize Teddy. 

One of the machine models from 'The Matrix'. They look so sinister in the films!

The mask from 'The Terminator'. I haven't seen the film but this looks pretty awesome. I plan on seeing it at some point, so this was pretty cool regardless. 

I wish that there had been more Star Wars things there, but I had seen the Star Wars exhibit when it came to Anchorage, AK, and that had the largest collection at a museum exhibit. I took so many photos during that experience with Whitney (whom I was there to visit at the time) that those will last me quite some time! 

After the sci-fi exhibit we went to 'The Art of Video Games'. Robert was all a-flutter since he had been a gamer from 8-21 years old. I haven't ever really played video games, so most of them were ones that I was not familiar with. One that I did know was Space Invaders, which I played on our computer at home. I've since downloaded the app and played it on my phone on the bus ride back home to PDX. It's entertaining for sure! 

On Saturday we went to the Pacific Science Center. It's a lot like OMSI and more geared toward children, but we still had a nice time there. Lots of interesting things. There was a dinosaur exhibit with anamatronic dinosaurs and factoids on plaques. Robert was all excited because he was a big dinosaur geek when he was a kid. 

This is the footprint of a duckbill dinosaur. It makes my 11.5 feet look minuscule! 

Inside the PSC was also a butterfly room with live butterflies flying around. You could walk through the room and take photos. Of course you weren't supposed to touch the butterflies, but one landed on my bag that I was holding for a moment. It reminded me of my trip to the butterfly farm while I was in Costa Rica and how you could walk through the large room where a lot of them were kept and they could just fly around freely. I guess that they have a super short lifespan, which I didn't know. 

This is Robert holding a "germ"stuffed toy. I want to say "stuffed animal", but it's not an animal at all. How funny is that? Why would you want it? lol. Robert makes a good Vanna White though! 

A replica of a T-Rex skull gettin' hungry! 

Our final big Seattle activity was exploring Pikes Place on Sunday before we left back to PDX. We had both been there before, but it's always fun to go through and look at people's wares and get some food. We had a cinnamon pull-apart and then a doughnut and wandered around. We got flowers for Michael and Brandon (so many beautiful ones there for good prices!) and then Robert got a cute bow-tie. I didn't find one that spoke to me, but maybe I'll borrow his at some point. ;) We did find a used bookstore in a level below the street level and they had super inexpensive books. I got two Star Wars ones and then the sequel to William Sleator's 'Interstellar Pig'. 

All in all, it was a great trip! I'm really glad that we got to go. It was our second little trip together since we had gone yurting on the coast for my birthday in February. I always have a good time with Robert no matter what we are doing, but the food, window shopping, museums, traveling around and exploring just upped the ante from what we usually do. It turned out super well and he said that it was the best birthday that he's had yet to date, which makes me happy to hear. I give our Seattle trip two thumbs up!