Seattle Trip - Day 5 - Another Day in Seattle, WA

Another day of adventure in Seattle. We decided to spend the first part of the day down at the public market. There were several vendors; fish, seafood, fruit vegetables, flowers and various other items. It was amazing to see just how many people were at the market, there were people everywhere.
We stopped by a gelato shop to get a little taste of Italy. Gelato is basically the Italian version of ice cream. It is a bit more dense and creamy than the American version.Another shop we stopped at was the Rocky Mountain Chocolate Factory. We didn't actually buy anything there, but got a pretty cool idea for Nicholette's, my niece, wedding next summer. They cover everything from strawberries to wine bottles in chocolate to make them look like bride and groom attire. It is quite cute.
We did a little more shopping and the girls got some shirts and other things. Then we headed over to the SAM. (Seattle Art Museum) Unfortunately there was no photography permitted in the museum where we spent about 3 hours of our day, but we did get you a few shots that we thought we'd add to the blog.

Here we are in the family room. Jessi is playing with some sort of boxing game. And here is Erik's artwork.Here are the girls being musicians. Melanie is on the tambourine and Jessi on they miniature cymbals. Wow their music was magical. :-)Here is a huge monkey head, not really sure what the significance of it is though. It was in the Native American section of the museum. I just thought it was cool.In the fish section of the market. There are a bunch of guys throwing fish around. When a person place an order, one of the guys up front grabs the fish in question, throws it back to the guys behind the counter, once they wrap it up they toss it back. It was pretty interesting to watch.
And some of the fish were HUGE!!
We then decided to head over the the Seattle Aquarium.
Here is a picture of the girls in front of one of the tanks. There sure are a lot of fish and other sea creatures in these tanks.
Here is an interactive pond where the girls were able to get a closer look at various sea creatures like, sea cucumbers, anemone, star fish, sea urchins and many others. There were these really cool worms called tube worms. They lived in these tubes under the water and when they were hungry they would send feather feelers out of the top. What makes them so cool you ask? Well whenever you would touch these feelers they would suck them back into the tube so quickly you couldn't help but jump back and giggle.
Here is a grouping of starfish. The interesting thing about the star fish was how they felt. Some were slimy, some were scaly, some felt a bit waxy, and others were spiny. And the array of colors was super cool too.
Here are the girls touching the different critters.
Here is a picture of some jellyfish. These were pretty small jelly fish with most being about 2" - 6" in size. Did you know that they can be as small as 1/2 inch in size? And the largest can be over 100 feet long... that is just crazy. Did you know that there are some species of jellyfish that can live up to 30 years?
There are numerous varieties of jellyfish. We discovered two very rare and strange species of jellyfish.
Here are the girls just goofing around. Hee Hee!!Here are some other pictures from the aquarium.
Here is one of the girls under the salmon tank.And one of Jessi with her best friend the Orca.
Here she is riding the Orca.
And here's Melanie on the Orca.
Jessi showing the seal just how much she loves him.
And Melanie fell in love with the same one.
Here is a sea otter family with to human tagalongs.
Sleeping otter or seal or something like that.
This was just a random fountain that we found down by the piers.
Sure hope nobody needs to use the phone?!?!
There are so many gorgeous flowers throughout Seattle that we had to post at least a few pictures.
We finally made it to the Space Needle. This is our first up close and personal view of it.
Here are the girls being "goof balls". :-)


This is the view looking straight down from the top of the Space needed. Although the overall construction is over 600' high, we were 520' up. It was oddly relaxing up there. I hate heights and I didn't feel nervous once. See the cars? They are tiny from up here.
Here are the girls posing for a picture. You are probably wondering what Jessi is doing. Well, she found a reflective surface and just had to look at herself.
A view of downtown Seattle from up in the space needle. It was a bit of an odd sensation to be looking down at so many tall buildings.
Can you spot our car? This was on a max 5X zoom. Our car is the dark grey one at the bottom center hald hidden by the tree.
Yes that is McDonald's down there. I'm guessing this is how they get the Space Needle goers to stop on in.
Another shot of the building at pier 70. Remember this is where the Real World was filmed for one season.
A view of the sun rays as they cascade infront of the mountains.
The mountains without the rays.
Here are the girls in front of the city.
We seem to have picked up a few alien hitchhikers while we were at the top of the Space Needle.

After the Space Needle we decided to go for a walk in search of food. We found a really yummy Chinese restauraunt. Here are the girls trying the tea.
And there they are eating with some chopstix.
I tried to videotape them eating with the chopstix, but Erik said something funny and this is what happened.

Here's a video of them watching the video from above.

And one of them watching the one from above. This could have went on all night.

Here is the space needle at night. It was so cool looking at 1 am.

Found this in the girls restroom. I thought it was funny that it was pink. I wonder if the boy one was blue???After a very long day we decided to see the new Harry Potter movie at the IMAX. It was pretty cool. The screen at the IMAX is like 6 stories high and 80 feet wide. And the surround sound is simply amazing.This is the tin man dressedup as Dumbldore.