Road Trip Seattle to San Francisco - Day 2 - Seattle Ducks, Space Needle, EMP Museum

[anji]

Road Trip Seattle to San Francisco – Day 2 – Seattle Ducks, Space Needle, EMP Museum

Awake bright and early after waking up a few times in the night from our very comfortable bed. I looked out onto the pool and looked forward to our adventures

Down for breakfast at 8am. This was really good with some particularly tasty sausages, eggs, cereal, pastries, fruit, waffles etc. etc. Always handy to have a free breakfast!

We’d decided to stay close to the hotel that day as we knew we’d be flagging by the evening and there was so much to do in the local area. I’d bought the Seattle City Pass online so first job was to go to the Space Needle and exchange our printout for a book of vouchers. This gave us free entry to 5 places, including twice to the Space Needle (one daytime and one night), and would save us many $$s.

We bypassed the line and were up really quickly to the 500’ observation deck. This isn’t actually that tall compared to many towers we’ve done. The view was wonderful even though it was fairly overcast that day. We had a coffee in Starbucks and then returned to the ground.

Next was Ride the Ducks amphibious craft tour, also from the Seattle Centre location. We thought this would be a good way to get our bearings and see the City and Lake Union. It was a 2 hour tour and lots of fun – the guide was a bit cheesy but knew his stuff and gave us lots of information. He told us there’s a Starbucks for every 1500 people in Seattle – it certainly seemed it too and it has the highest number of Starbucks per head of any US city.

Going out onto Lake Union was fun and we were lucky to see the seaplanes taking off. The houseboats were amazing – and extremely expensive – and we saw the one featured in Sleepless in Seattle.

Lunch next. This was at the Tilikim Place Café. I’m sorry but I’m not a great recorder of food for the records. After this we made a quick trip to Wallgreens and went back to the hotel to drop off the bags.

Back out again to the EMP Museum next to the Space Needle. This stands for Experience Music Project and covers music, sci-fi and pop culture. It was founded by Paul Allen of Microsoft as a non-profit concern. The huge shiny building is based on Jimi Hendrix’s guitar. The monorail track goes through it to get into the station.

We had free entry with our City Pass but paid an extra $5 for the special Star Trek exhibition. This was a good move as it was brilliant – lots of props, costumes and interactive stuff to do.

I loved the huge guitar ‘sculpture’ – some of them were playing with little moving parts. There was the most enormous screen playing music videos and a big crowd gathered for Michael Jackson’s Thriller.
The music and musical instruments, with heavy emphasis on locals like Jim Hendrix and Kurt Cobain, is only part of this amazing building. Will is a huge music fan and adored it.

We then moved on to the Science Fiction, Horror and Fantasy sections. There’s a ton of movie memorabilia here. Wizard of Oz is one of my favourites and the lion costume was there – I was horrified to find out it’s made from real lion skin!

We were there a good four hours in all as there was so much to look at and have a go on and we could easily have stayed longer, but we needed a rest as the day before was catching up with us. We returned to the hotel for half an hour’s sit down before heading out again.

Our Space Needle ticket included an evening visit too (in 24 hours) so we set off to see the sunset. It was fairly cloudy but sunny at that point. Of course, the sun decided to set behind one of the clouds so it wasn’t too spectacular that night. The view really sets off the Puget Sound and the islands – we would visit Bainbridge Island later on.

We returned to the Tilikum area again as there was lots of choice for dinner there. We settled on the SPORT bar which is under the KOMO4 TV station building – which was used as the hospital in Grey’s Anatomy. Typical sports bar and we had pizzas which were both very good indeed. Seattle Mariners were on the screens playing baseball and they won – so good all round. They were playing the Cleveland Indians in a series and were also on the following night. We agreed we didn’t really know anything about the game but would quite like to go for the experience. We’d have liked to go to see either Seattle or Portland soccer but the USA team were in the Copa America so no league games to suit our timings unfortunately.

On the way back we stopped to take a picture of the Elephant Car Wash – this was the first automated car wash in USA and has been there since 1951.

It was 10.30pm when we got back to the hotel – both very tired but needing our bed! We had to be up early next day again for the Free Walking Tours I had us booked on.

Index http://www.thedibb.co.uk/forums/showthread.php?t=966569

[jheaton]

great trippie-I loved Seattle when we visited 2 years ago

[Cannavar]

Thanks for the report! We are heading there in two weeks and are planning almost exactly the same day...we've already booked the duck tour!

Looking forward to reading more! Did you stop at Portland?

[anji]

Janet - love your photos!

Cannavar - yes we had 2 nights in Portland and would happily live there!

[Guest]

You should have had dinner in the revolving restaurant at the top of the Space Needle. It's nice to watch the sunset over Elliots Bay and Puget Sound.
And the EPM is just amazing.

[LOU LOU DISNEY]

Ah this looks amazing! I can’t wait to visit the EMP as we are huge music fans & love the whole Seattle music scene, hubby is a huge nirvana fan!
That was a flat out day, we plan to do the space needle too, great pics looking forward to reading more😊

[anji]

Yes we packed it in! I'd highly recommend getting the Go Seattle card as it saved us both $$s and wait time.

[cornishfrogboy]

EMP museum is now on my list for April 2023!

[anji]

Originally Posted by cornishfrogboy

EMP museum is now on my list for April 2023!

See more...

It's now been renamed MoPOP - the Museum of Pop Culture - fabulous place. There are always special events and exhibitions on also. Enjoy! Here's the link ...
mopop/