Seattle Art Museum

Within one block downtown are the Pike's Place Market, symphony hall and the art museum. The library is only 2 more blocks away. The city is very walkable (except for the hills).

This sculpture is in front of the art museum but owned by the city.

This is the grand staircase.

This is an installation about motion.

This guy believes he's the next Picasso. It's a nice museum.

The Retractable Roof on the Baseball Stadium

They can close this roof in 8 minutes when it starts to rain. It is very slick.

Mariners/Braves Game

We took the Water Taxi over from Alki Beach to the stadium.

Our plan was to pick up sandwiches on the way to the stadium from Mario Batali's father's butcher/sandwich shop.

The name of the place is Salulmi.

This was the line to get a sandwich at this place. It's only open from Tuesday to Friday from 11-3. The sandwiches were great.

The football stadium is on the way to the baseball stadium. They're right next door to each other.

This is the entrance to the football stadium.

At this stadium, they encourage people to buy food outside. Interesting.

We sat in the bleachers just inside the foul pole on the left field side. Our neighbors were all very lovely, highly educated baseball people. Seattle made a very good impression.

The Braves won. In fact, they swept the Mariners.

The Museum of Flight

Ed visited The Museum of Flight on Monday, June 27, which is located at Paine Field and was Seattle's airport prior to WWII.

The museum was founded by Paul Allen, the cofounder of Microsoft.

They have actual and reconstructed planes from the Wright brothers and before to the present.
They have over 250 docents, most of whom I suspect are largely Boeing retirees.

The Mars Rover

They highlighted the careers of the American aviation pioneers.

Ed in a space suit.

The moon rover

An F-4 Phantom. Ed worked at McDonnel Douglas summers during college when they were producing the fighters in the 1960's.

The simulated tower at the museum overlooks Paine Field.

The xerox machine from the last retired Air Force 1

The air car from the 1950's, it could actually fly and the fusalage and wings can be detached and towed behind the car or left at the hanger.

The history and evolution of the flight attendents' uniforms was interestingly.

The last Concord to fly to the U.S.

Kids and parents can sit in the cockpit of a fighter jet. They have a lot of hands-on simulators for kids and adults.

This is the actual Red Barn where Bill Boeing started building his aircraft in the 1910's at Paine Field. It was moved away and then moved back to the museum.

Alki Beach in West Seattle

An interesting part of travelling is the unexpected pleasant (and unpleasant) surprises one encounters. Alki Beach has been an unexpected pleasure for us. Our condo is one block off of this beach. The weather is starting to warm up here and on nice days this beach is crowded with dog walkers, kids and beach volleyball players in bikinis.


There is an assortment of restaurants along the waterfront, some of which we have tried. It is very, very pleasant here and I highly recommend a visit. Also, on the day we go to the Mariners game, we are going to take the water taxi from here over to downtown so we won't take our car.

I find it ironic that we ended up in a beach town so similar to Tybee only on the other coast.

There are 6 reproductions of the Statue of Liberty around the country and one of them is here. This is where the city of Seattle was founded.

Chateau Ste. Michelle winery

This winery is close to the suburbs of Redmond and Bellevue.

The grounds are extensive. They even have an amphitheater and every month they have musical acts that are quite famous.

Please note that it got warm enough yesterday (73) for me to wear a short sleeve sweater.

Only 1% of Washington's grapes are grown on the Seattle side of the mountains. However, this winery does bottle their white wines. This is a huge winery operation which includes Columbia Crest as one of their brands. The wines were very good.

A Trip to Vashon Island with Maria

Here we are on Vashon Island embarking on the garden tour with Maria, who is Carmen's sister, who is Walker's mother in law. (She is Christie's aunt.)

Here is Maria planning our route.

There was a lot of garden art for sale.

We bought our tickets at an art gallery.

Ed is crazy to buy one of these gates but knows it will rust all up on Tybee.

Everything grows like crazy here.

More garden sculpture.

Always the water is in the background.

Maria says Mt. Rainier is very elusive. Seattlers only see is about twice a year. Maria says we were very lucky. We were coming back on the ferry and there it was.