Seattle; Thursday, 28 April, 2022

Considering that, by the time I turned in the previous evening, I’d been on the go for 23 hours and was struggling to keep my eyes open I was confident of getting a long night’s sleep and waking up at a suitable hour.

Which of course meant that I was wide awake and unable to get back to sleep at 4am. Unfortunately, breakfast didn’t start until 6:30, so I spent the intervening time reading in bed before getting up for a shower a little after 6. Of course, having breakfast at 06:30 didn’t really help as none of the attractions I wanted to visit were open until 10am, so there was no real point in leaving the hotel until 9am.

Eventually a reasonable hour to set out came round and I headed over a couple of blocks to the Westlake centre where I picked up the Monorail over to the Space Needle. Both were built for the 1962 Worlds Fair, and 60 years later both are still going strong.

I was still very early at the Space Needle, but it did mean that I was first in the queue to go up so I was able to get straight up the tower without any waits and could get lots of photos taken before the crowds started to build up on the observation platform and the rotating floor below.

Having taken in the Space Needle I descended back to street level and walked the short distance round to the Museum of Popular Culture. The museum was originally dedicated to music – and still has large exhibitions on local bands Pearl Jam and Nirvana as well as exhibitions on Jimmy Hendrix, Hip-Hop and guitars, but they’ve also broadened out their remit to include exhibitions on TV, Film, Sci-Fi, Fantasy and Horror. I spent a good two hours looking round all the different exhibits, after which I was starting to feel the effects of having had breakfast at 6:30.

Close to the museum is the Armory, which has – since the 1962 World’s Fair – been a food court, having previously actually been an Armory, so I headed over there and had a very nice pizza for lunch before heading onto my final stop of the afternoon the Chihuly Garden and Glass attraction, located halfway between the Armory and the Space Needle.

Dale Chihuly is a Tacoma born artist who specialises in glass and the museum has a large collection of his works, which are all pretty spectacular when you remember it’s all made from glass. I had a decent amount of time looking round the exhibition which is split into three sections. The first part is some of the more spectacular and delicate pieces which are housed inside the building. Then there is a small cinema which shows a number of films that explore Dale’s work, before you enter into the Garden where many more examples are on display amongst the plants and trees.

Having taken in pretty much all the sites on the old site of the Worlds Fair I headed back over to the Monorail station and caught it back into town and then headed back to the hotel for a little bit to freshen up and consider if I did need dinner, given that the pizza at lunch had been quite generous.

I decided I didn’t need to have dinner, so I stayed in my room until it was time to head back out again all they way over to the Space Needle. The ticket you get gives you two visits – one during the day and another on the same day, but in the final 3 hours of opening, so you can go up the town and catch sunset and a different view of Seattle in the same day, and that was my plan for the evening.

I headed out of the hotel just before 7 and caught the monorail back over to the Sky Needle. I’d assumed there would be a big queue, but in the end it took less than 5 minutes to be back up on the observation deck, though it was clear that the weather had decided that a sunset was not going to be offered, with heavy clouds filling much of the sky, still I stayed up at the top – and had a drink at the bar – whilst the light faded and the lights of the city switched on. As the last Monorail was at 9pm I didn’t stay that late as I didn’t really fancy a long walk back to the hotel, so shortly before 20:30 I headed back down to ground level and made my way back to the hotel and, hopefully, a better nights sleep.