We're on a boat!

Today was all about the waterfront. We had bought CityPasses and it included a one hour harbor tour and admission to the Aquarium.It was a beautiful day, high of 85 and sunny, so a great day to be on the water (every day has been beautiful here, cool in the mornings and evenings, sunny and hot during the day). Our timing was also good today, the light rail pulled into the station just as we got there (usually the the train that comes is out of service and we always have to wait for the next one), and then we got our boat tickets for the next tour which was in 10 minutes. Time from leaving the house to getting on the boat: 45 minutes!

The tour was very informative, I learned a lot but I'm not posting all of the facts here. Just lots of pictures of the Seattle skyline, Mt. Ranier, Puget Sound, and the Cascade Mountains.

A moving piece in front of the Seattle Art Museum. The arm with the hammer swings up and down.

The "Harbor Steps". Me, looking at all of those stairs.

Leaving Pier 55

A ferry and part of the Cascade Mountains behind it.

HUGE cruise ship. This one holds about 4000-5000 passengers and a little over 1000 crew members.

 

 A forest of masts.

Mt. Rainier

Mt. Rainier. It can only be seen this clearly about 90 days of the year. There are several glaciers on the mountain and they create their own weather and it is obscured most of the time. It is also an active volcano.

 These remind me of something you would see in Star Wars.

 Container ship being unloaded and loaded at the same time.

There could be inventory on this boat for the company I work for. 

The Edgewater Hotel. The Beatles have stayed here and so can you. It actually has a really interesting history. People used to fish right from the hotel windows until the management put a stop to it. Imagine hotel guests cleaning 10 to 20 pound salmon in their rooms or tossing the fish in the bathtubs.

Touch pools in the Aquarium

An arch filled with jelly fish.

Carpet anemone with clown fish.

Ye Olde Curiosity Shoppe. Filled with strange stuff, there are "Bunny doves" in that case. Someone put bunny heads on bird bodies.

 We had lunch on the waterfront at Elliot's Oyster Bar. The food was really good, I can recommend the place if you're ever in Seattle at Pier 55.