Fall Break - Seattle Trip

For Fall Break, we decided to take a quick trip to Seattle for a couple days.  We decided we only needed to stay one night if we could get there early enough on Friday and didn't have to leave until later on Saturday night.  Really all we needed to take was pj's, a change of clothes for the next day and of course my makeup and hair stuff for me and Mia so we decided to only take 1 backpack to carry all our stuff.  It wasn't a lot but I felt bad making Randy carry it the whole time.  He was a good sport about it though.  We didn't want to rent a car so we didn't know where we'd put our luggage the whole time so the 1 backpack thing was a good option for us.

We got up early Friday morning and drove down to Las Vegas to catch a direct flight to Seattle that got us there around noon.

Mt Rainier from the plane

We caught the hotel shuttle to the hotel in hopes that we could check in a little early to leave our stuff (backpack...haha) and luckily we were able to check in.  We then walked up to the closest train stop that was about 5 blocks away and rode the train into the city.  Once in the city, we decided to take the monorail tram over to the Space Needle.  It was built in the 60's to help in transporting people during the World's Fair.

On the tram to the Space Needle

We got to the Space Needle and got tickets to go up but there was about a 2-hour wait.  It worked out good though because we wanted to see the city at night and during the day and since our tickets were good for 24 hours, we could come back and go up again the next day.  The ticket package we bought was through SkyWest and included a few other attractions that we didn't really know much about but one of them was the Chihuly Glass and Gardens that was right next to the needle so we decided to go check it out.  It was actually pretty incredible.  It was a museum with all these unique glass sculptures that was really interesting and beautiful.

This was one of my favorite sculptures

This was just outside Chihuly as it got dark

After Chihuly, we went over to the Space Needle visitor center to look around until it was time to go up.  They had a place where you could do a virtual reality tour of the needle and Alex and Randy had to try it out.

Family pic before going up the needle

Finally it was time to ride up the long elevator to the top of the Space Needle.  They crammed a bunch of us in there and I worried it would hold us all but it made it to the top. :)  Saying the view was amazing was an understatement.  It was absolutely incredible.  We were lucky to be there at dusk so we could see the sunset and the lights of the city.  There are two levels at the top...one that you can walk around the outside and one that's enclosed and the floor rotates.  The kids thought that was pretty fun to just stand there and turn in circles.

Halen photobombing us :)

We stayed at the top for quite a while until we decided we were starving and ready for dinner.  So we headed back to the monorail and train and stopped to eat along the way.  We had to take one more pic of the Space Needle all lit up though.

By the time we got back to the train stop by our hotel, it was late and getting a little chilly.  I was wishing I would have brought a jacket.  We had to walk the 5 blocks back to the hotel in the dark and we were all ready to climb into our warm beds and get some sleep.

Saturday morning, we got up and had breakfast at the hotel before heading out.  We had the hotel shuttle take us up to the train stop this time.  We headed straight for the Space Needle first thing that morning so we could go back up to see the city during the daylight.  We weren't going to ride the monorail again but the kids really wanted to so we did. :)  

The view from the top of the needle was just as breathtaking during the day.  Seattle really is a beautiful city.

Family pic before going up Saturday morning

Alex sitting on the rotating floor

Looking down on Chihuly Gardens

After spending some time on the Space Needle, we took the train down toward the wharf to take a harbor cruise.  It was so much fun to see the city from that vantage point.  It was breezy and quite cold so we actually took a couple shirts out of the backpack to wrap around us to keep warm. :)

After the cruise, we walked up to the famous "Gum Wall".  Not sure how or why this wall got started, but it's up in an alleyway close to the harbor and it is covered with gum.  Of course we had to add a little bit of ourselves to the wall too. :)

Randy was so excited to find this wall

The Market Square wasn't far from the gum wall so we walked up there and shopped for a few souvenirs and watched the famous fish market workers throwing the fish around for customers.

We then hit up the aquarium that's along the harbor.  It wasn't as big as we had hoped it would be but the kids had fun seeing the fish and sea life.

We stopped to have some dinner before catching the train back to the airport for our flight home.  The flight left around 9pm so we got back to Vegas pretty late and still had to drive home but we had a great time.  It was a quick trip and we packed a lot into just a couple days but we felt like we saw everything we wanted to and we made some fun memories.  Randy & I will still have to go back sometime to go to the temple there but this was a trip for the kids and I think we all had a lot of fun.