Finishing up in the Seatle area - August 8 to 10, 2013

We finished up our sightseeing on Thursday, August 8 by visiting the museum complex in Tacoma WA. We parked and put money in the pay machine. We got a receipt which we put in the van window. It seems that most parking in Washington is done this way, and if you move your car and still have time on the receipt you can park somewhere else without paying more. Santa Monica eat your heart out!

We visited the Tacoma Art Museum. I think it has been redone recently and is a beautiful, but simple building. It seems to specialize in art glass by Dale Chihuly. The four sides of the museum surround a patio which has raised sections and displays glass balls of various sizes and colors, all designed by Chihuly. He donated it in honor of his mother and they take it down during the winter since it is outside! There is a whole room showcasing his various glass series from when he first started glass blowing to the present. They were all so beautiful and interesting. Then we saw an exhibit of the art of Z. Vanessa Helder. She does wonderful water colors of scenes that are so perfect they almost seem like photographs. How anyone can do that with water color is amazing! She works in other mediums so the exhibit was quite large and lovely.

After looking through the three floors of the museum we walked over to the glass bridge. This is a normal bridge across the freeway, but Chihuly has used it to display more of his glass work – just stunning. On the other side of the bridge is the glass museum, which is another beautiful building. We didn’t have time to visit it. We walked back and stopped in Union Station. This is the former railroad depot which has been repurposed to be the courthouse. It has five works by Chihuly, so we spent some time looking at those.

I didn’t mean to spend so much time writing about Tacoma. On Friday, August 9^th we had another day in a museum, and I could write another book! Don used to go to Boeing when he was working and always wanted to see Boeing Field. So, we went to the Museum of Flight. I was prepared to be bored - but found it extremely interesting. We spent over 3 hours and were so tired we didn't even really see much in the last room

We found driving and parking in Seattle extremely nerve wracking with our van. We also had our dog, so didn't want to leave him in the van for too long (luckily it was cool enough at the Museum and he was OK). Anyway, we spent some time at Seattle Center because Don had been to Expo 62 and wanted to see what was left. We did find another labyrinth. There was more Chihuly to look at, and we visited the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation visitor center.  Then we parked near Pike St. Market but it was so crowded we didn't spend a lot of time looking around. I did buy some kohlrabi! 

Then we drove over to Pioneer Square so we could get my National Parks passport stamped at the Klondike Gold Rush NHS. We tried to find a place to park to walk around in the freeway park which looked quite lovely when we drove under it on the freeway. But we gave up and went to Ivars for dinner! And that was our two days in Seattle.