Seattle

Conference finished, time to see some of Seattle.  First the Chihuly garden and glass, which was actually pretty impressive, and worth the steep entry price.

Glass leeches?

Next Em got in line for the Space Needle (meh, certainly not worth waiting in line for an hour), and I went to the Experience Music Project.  They had some decent exhibits (Hendrix, Stones, Nirvana, AC/DC) and downstairs there was an Icons of Science Fiction exhibit, which was interesting, but small.

To be honest I wasn't super impressed with the exhibits, the music ones seemed to be lacking in interesting content and rich detail.  They felt like larger-than-usual collections of fan memorabilia.

Least frackin interesting costume display ever, but I love my BSG

Next we got on the ferry to Bainbridge island with our friends J+B, recently back from Alaska.  The ride over was nice, but there wasn't much on Bainbridge to hold our interest.

This sculpture may have been the highlight of our Bainbridge island visit

And finally, back to the hotel via the Olympic sculpture park, which was a nice attempt at revitalising a shitty bit of land spanning a train line and a freeway, but didn't seem to quite hit the mark like, say, NYC's highline.

I promise I'll say something positive next :)  In general I actually really liked Seattle, we stayed in a great neighbourhood (Queen Anne) with nice bars and restaurants, and I loved the coffee culture.  Espresso!  Everywhere!

Maybe it's the engineer in me: I found Ballard Locks really interesting.  The city has built a series of fish 'ladders' to allow the salmon passage upstream to spawn.  It's basically a series of small weirs that the fish jump over to get upstream.  There is a viewing area where you can see the salmon underwater, and if you wait long enough on the walkway, you can see them jump the barriers.  Pretty cool.

There will be a test later

Sprinklers to keep the hordes of seagulls from eating all the little fish that tumble through the lock and end up on the surface when it opens.