Observations, tips and other information about places I've been.
Seattle, pt. 2 Chihuly Garden and Glass and the Space Needle
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I spent my Sunday in Seattle going to the Chihuly Garden and Glass and the Space Needle. I booked a joint ticket; it was timed for entrance into the Space Needle, but open-ended for Chihuly. I didn't have any idea what to expect at Chihuly, I thought, meh, glass, okay I'll check it out. Well, shut the front door, I was blown away, jaw-dropping. The colors, the shapes and complexity and variety, it was all just crazy. The hushed silences were not required, but I think everyone was overwhelmed with the scope of what we were seeing. You kind of flow from room to room, taking in the colors, and then you move out of the dark rooms into a greenhouse type of structure and then into gardens.
The Chihuly is very near the Space Needle and a park with treats and vendors, which is a good place to hang out and people watch and wait for your turn to join the queue to go up to the top. There are some reviews that are dismissive of going to the top of the Space Needle, it's cheesy, tacky, boring, a tourist trap. I think you have to make up your own mind. If you like going to the tops of buildings, and I do, I wanted to do it. I like the perspective you get when you are high above the city, looking out, and from up in the Space Needle, which was erected for the 1962 World's Fair, you can see into the port, and if the skies cooperate, you can glimpse Mt. Rainier. You can go outside, which I did, and get annoyed with people taking selfies, which I did. I went in early evening, and if I planned it differently, I might have gone later in the evening to see the city at night. There is a bar on the rotating floor, which might be cool, but I'm too cheap and I don't really drink, so, I gave that a miss. I am glad I went up, and I think I would have regretted not checking out one of America's most iconic sites with its spacecrafty capsule.
P.S. I managed to publish this before I finished it, but it's finished now. Because the Moai and related sites are protected, you can't wander around most of the areas on your own, you need to be in the company of a guide and always bring your national park ticket (except in the Tahai). The cool thing is the ticket gets stamped and it's a nice souvenir. We saw so many things and I'm sure I'm not going to get everything right or identify everything, but I'll try. We first went to a site with some recreated dwellings and even a chicken coop and learned how they were created and how building materials were repurposed when necessary. At Akahanga we saw many toppled Moai and some topple top knots (those are the red stones). In some cases, Moai were toppled because the people lost faith in their gods, in other cases it was because of fights between the different clans. They were originally built between 1200 and 1500, give or take a hundred years or so. toppled Mo...
I must apologize, I feel like I've been away for a while, but it's not because I've been shirking my responsibilities. I left beautiful, but windy, Scotland to head to the Thames Valley, and my friends in Bracknell. I was looking forward to some down time for this day and a half, and our traditional Indian meal. On Sunday, we went to see my friend's daughter, and my friend as well, and her family for a fish and chips dinner. We had enough chips to feed an army, or Bob's chickens. Yes, I found out my friend started keeping chickens in the back garden. I never officially met the girls. But I did hear the, quite loudly one morning. I didn't have anything planned, but my friend and I went into Windsor on Monday, and watched the guards march to the castle. We also took a brief river cruise on the Thames. That night we ate too much at our Indian dinner, but it's so hard to choose between rices and naan bread options, and then of course, you have to have a pudding....
I'm a little behind in the old blog posting, frustration with the keyboard and some long nights precluded me from focusing on writing. In an attempt to get back on track before my trip to the Lake District and Yorkshire are too far in the rearview mirror, I'm going for some low-hanging fruit, or perhaps I should say, low-hanging cheese. I normally don't take pictures of food unless there's something interesting or different (don't get me wrong, I THINK about food ALL THE TIME), but given the locales and some of the food, I took many pictures. I'm going to write this and then get some dinner. no need for Plan B Unless there's some kind of food emergency, I try to stay away from food I can get at home, like McDonald's, Burger King, Pizza Hut, Starbucks, etc., and eat 'local' (to an extent, as we all know from my travel book Oh, You're a Vegetable , I can be a picky eater). I made an honest effort to try things I haven't tried before,...
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