{seattle}

We went to Seattle last week. We touristed the crap out of that city. We came back yesterday. I'm in the fuzzy place between vacation and real life where you can't remember how grown-ups do stuff. Make my own food? Clean up after myself? Drive? Errands? What?
 

Anyway.

We're learning this about ourselves lately: we don't love being where all the people are. We like walking around, avoiding the large crowds, looking for coffee shops and greasy pub burgers and finding quiet parks and live music and stuff like that. But Seattle has this thing called the City Pass that gets you into a bunch of its main tourist attractions for $65 altogether. We decided to try it out and see if it was worth it.

It got us into the aquarium, the Space Needle (twice), the EMP Museum, the Museum of Flight, and on a cruise around the harbour. We were tourists to the max, and I hung the camera around my neck without shame.

Verdict: worth it if you're into those sorts of things. The EMP Museum (a museum entirely dedicated to music, sci-fi and pop culture) was very cool, the hour-long cruise was good, the aquarium... would've been a crushing disappointment if it hadn't been for the giant octopus (no sharks?), the Museum of Flight was sweet, and the Space Needle was just okay. (Apparently, you can get the same view from the Columbia tower for only $7 or something like that, and if you've been up the Empire State Building or the CN Tower or anything like that, you might possibly be seriously underwhelmed.) So maybe not something we'd do again, but also not something we regret.

Plus, it was all generally easy stuff to do with a 7 month-old in tow, which was key. Babies love museums.
 

   

We did other stuff too though. We saw the Blue Jays play the Mariners at Safeco and took the obligatory gum wall pictures. We wandered through Pike Place at one in the morning and went shopping downtown and visited the Olympic Sculpture Park by the harbour. We visited as many coffee shops as we could and rated them on atmosphere, coffee, and baked goods. 

When we were tired of the crowds and the walking, we sat in our room and watched Shark Week on the Discovery Channel while Sullivan read One Fish Two Fish Red Fish Blue Fish in his playpen. 

It was a different kind of vacation but that in itself was fun--it was our first as a family of three. Slightly (very) terrifying, but good. Really good.