Fun in Seattle

Since James is on spring break this week, we took the opportunity to go over to Seattle for a couple of days and see the sights. Normally, we ignore the "official" school holidays, but since James is with us this year, my kids are a bit wiser about when other kids have time off. :) The kiddos really had never been to Seattle so that was great fun, and my folks ended up being able to come with us as well. I figure I'll cover what we did and such in this post, then post random pics over the next week or so. 

First off, the hotel...we stayed at a really great hotel, The Maxwell Hotel. I didn't know anything about it, but having a pool is high up on my kids list so that narrowed down the search a lot (although their pool is very small ~15x20). I also wanted to be within walking distance of most downtown stuff as well as having a place I felt safe staying in. So, after searching around TripAdvisor, this place moved to the top. Add to that a great price through Bookit.com (some pretty mixed reviews, but it worked fine for me), and we had a place to stay. Some other great perks about this place were free parking, yummy mini cupcakes and coffee in the afternoon, and a room upgrade. I also thought their decor was lots of fun...happy, bright colors. 

We headed out the door here in Wenatchee about 8:15 a.m. and arrived in Seattle a bit before 11:00. The hotel staff very graciously allowed us to check in that early so we settled our stuff in the rooms and left for the Pacific Science Center. Thankfully the sun had peeked through so we enjoyed a lovely walk over to the center, passing by one of my favorite things, the International Fountain. I love watching the water shoot out, especially if it is one that is synchronized with the music. We all enjoyed the Science Center...Hannah especially enjoyed the butterfly exhibit. I think Josh enjoyed the 5 senses portion the best. Although fun, it seemed somewhat limited compared to the many other science museums we've been to through the years. We probably finished most of it in about 4 hours. 

The next day, we walked and walked and walked some more. We first went down to the Olympic Sculpture Park. There are some interesting sculptures, but most are rather odd. We walked along the waterfront, went to the carousel, and over to Pike's Place Market. It's fun just walking through there, looking at all the lovely flowers and crafts and just being in the city. For lunch, we had an Indian buffet which was super yummy and then off for home. On our way, we stopped and walked around the Arboretum and Foster Island, both of which were fun to see. Foster Island has this really cool group of bridges/paths/other that you can walk along to get to the smaller islands, and the Arboretum had beautiful trees flowering right now (although not too much else). We then took the floating bridge over lake Washington and came on home. 

As with most of my favorite times away, it was short and sweet. I'm always so happy to get back into my own home and back into "normal" life. :) Hope all of you are having a delightful spring break as well...