Seattle Trip - Day 4

On the agenda for Friday was the Seattle Aquarium and Pike's Place Market. It was another perfect sunny day, and we headed down early and met up with my cousin Denise, her daughters Hillary and Grace, my sis and niece Kayla.

The aquarium had been redone since I'd been several years ago and I was really excited to see it! I had already told Sophie all about the "petting zoo" part of it where you get to touch all sorts of things. All the kids loved that part, and it's where we spent a lot of our time.

William really liked the tide pools, but not so much for the educational value. He pretty much just wanted to splash everyone. :-)

All the girls were really into it. There were several marine biologists scattered about, ready to tell the kids all about the various specimens in the tide pools. They touched every single thing more than once. It was so fun!

Look at the colors! So pretty.

After petting everything, the girls all got their faces painted. Aren't they a cute bunch? :-)

We had a few close encounters....

but fortunately no one was hurt. :-)
There was a big underwater dome you could sit in and watch all the sea life go by.

After we saw everything inside, we headed to the outside portion to see the seals and sea otters. I must note that I was somewhat traumatized by the sea otters and it involved something one of them was holding which I initially thought was a toy, but turned out NOT to be a toy. But that story is for another time. This is a G-rated blog, after all.

After the aquarium, for some twisted reason we were all craving fish n chips. Awful, I know. But we headed to the waterfront eateries for lunch. Along the way, we saw this really neat site:

I read all about this totem pole, but don't remember any of it. It looks pretty neat though!

After lunch we headed to Pike's Place Market. Being that it was a really nice day, it was completely packed so we didn't stay too long. We walked around, checked out the original Starbuck's (yep, the very first one ever) and had some ice cream. I had the most amazing honey lavender made by a local dairy. Sooo good!

There it is! The original Starbucks. See the line? No, we didn't wait in it. I've had Starbucks before, thank you!

Pike's Place Market is one of the neatest places I've ever been. It's a literal feast for the senses. So many colors, sights, scents and sounds. I could go there every day and never get tired of it.

When we finished up at the market, we headed back to my mom's and rested a bit before dinner. That night, we went to Anthony's Beach Cafe, which is right on the waterfront in Edmonds. We met my grandparents there and had a nice dinner (between tantrums, that is). The kids were pretty worn out at this point and I won't lie.....it got ugly a few times! It was a beautiful evening to eat outside though. The kids played while we waited for our table.

One of these days we'll get a picture of everyone looking in the same direction at once!