The second part of my trip (first part here) involved us checking out some other interesting things in the Seattle area over the next couple of days.
I am not sure of the exact order because I actually spent time naming all of my photos based on the content of the photo. While this was a nice idea at first, it took way too much time, and it completely messed with the ordering of the photos.
Just a pic from the road of downtown Seattle.
In any case, I believe we all first went to the Museum of Flight as one of the first attractions. It was quite impressive and had a staggering amount of airplanes and aviation related material on the inside (and outside) to check out. There are plenty more pictures, but I think some of the cooler ones are below.
This is an F-4 Phantom, one of the jets that the US Navy has used a bit in the past. It has 2 seats, and it could fly at supersonic speeds, intended for interception of other jets and used for bombing.
This is just a AGM-86B cruise missile that US Air Force used. It is a cruise missile launched from jets and airplanes, and it could fly more than 1,500 miles.
The Sputnik 1, the first satellite that humans put into orbit around Earth. Good job Russia! It is actually only 58cm in diameter, or about 2′.
The Lockheed SR-71 Blackbird. One of the fastest jets ever created, if a missile was launched at the Blackbird, it would simply fly away from the missiles faster than the missiles themselves could travel.
The car of the future! But seriously, I am so glad that flying cars is not a thing. People already can’t drive well, don’t maintain their vehicles and have sudden breakdowns, and drive drunk. Would you really want hundreds of these flying around in the air above your house, ready to breakdown and/or crash through your roof? Not me.
The lunar rover. Travel on the moon in style!
I am not sure of the history on this one, but quite cool looking, nevertheless!
Just a plane for NASA. Not the big Boeing 747s that carried the space shuttles, though.
I can’t recall what airplane this cockpit was in, but it’s a lot of buttons in any case! The window was also quite smudged from hand prints…
After the Museum of Flight, we went downtown. Unfortunately, I didn’t take so many impressive pictures – most pictures I took were of random pedestrians from within the car as we drove around. Or a picture of a pigeon…
I am really not sure why I took such lame pictures at that moment. After locating a parking spot, we walked around downtown a bit. We went to Pike Place market, which is a world-famous fish market right at the harbor. I didn’t take any pictures, but the various seafood shops (both raw fish and cooked and prepared meals) were impressive. We even got to see the infamous scene where some of the merchants were throwing fish around at each other.
After some more walking around, we got to see the first Starbucks ever, since it started right in Seattle, close to Pike Place market. I remember being kind of embarrassed to take such a photo, so the best I have is the following.
After downtown, we went to the Pacific Science Center, which was a cool interactive museum about various scientific topics. I don’t have too many pictures without my fellow students, and since I don’t have their permission, I won’t be posting their pictures.
As such, one of the few pictures I have is of this table, which was filled with some green liquid, and you could spin the table around, creating interesting spiral patterns within the fluid.
They also have a pretty cool butterfly house that we went into where we got to see lots of brilliantly colored butterflies.
Lastly, while we were walking around downtown in the evening one of the nights, we came across an impressive glass sculpture that was hanging from the ceiling. Based on some searching, it looks like it was likely done by Dale Chihuly, a famous glass-blowing artist who has a big presence in the area.
And that would about wrap up my experiences in Seattle. We didn’t get to go to the needle unfortunately, but we had limited time and couldn’t see everything. Regardless, that’s something I would like to amend someday when I get back to Seattle.
I again have to thank my old tech teacher, along with everyone else who made it possible for our class to go to Seattle like we did to see the Microsoft campus and some other sites around Seattle. I believe my teacher had about 10 birthday celebrations while we were on the trip too. It wasn’t even close to her birthday, but we kept telling everyone at places we went that it was her birthday so they would sing for her and/or give her cake. On the airplane? We got them to sing for her. At the restaurants? You bet we got some cake. It was actually quite an effective, embarrassing, yet harmless prank to pull on someone. But I digress. It was a great experience, and I would love to go back to Seattle some day!