So when we woke up the final day of the trip, the ship had already landed again.  Those sneaks!  I was really sad that we missed out every time the ship came into port  

As we arrived in Seattle at about 6:00 AM and our plane didn’t leave till 5, we decided to do one last excursion.  We bought ticket for a bus ride back to the airport that made a few touristy stops on the way.  We had priority departing off the ship with this excursion, so we were able to fly past all those other people waiting in line to get off.  We also took our luggage with us so we didn’t have to search for it in the sea of suitcases.

We found our bus quickly and hopped on

Last bus ride of this trip

I felt sorry for the bus driver.  She was no spring chicken and she had to load ALL the suitcases onto the bus.  Not only was it hot already but the bus was full and I can tell you, some people have humongous suit cases and were definitely not traveling light!  She got her cardio work in that morning.

When the driver finally got back on the bus the poor girl was hot ans sweaty.  I’m sure she enjoyed the air conditioning.  Once we took off, she proceeded to give us a monologue of all the interesting sights in Seattle.  Did you know that Seattle is home to Microsoft….Google….Boeing…and Starbucks?  There are 142 Starbuck stores in Seatle.  Wowzer!  You better like coffee if you live in that town.

We passed by these domed gardens/office building

Garden

and office building

I bet only the high mucky mucks get to have their offices in there.  How peaceful.  I wonder if you have to dodge the birds and do they poop on your desk while you’re trying to work?

Seattle also has a lot of art statue around the city.  Here is a stainless steel tree 

I suppose being on the ocean they had to make it out of stainless steel so it wouldn’t rust.  Aren’t I the smart one.

We also saw this umbrella

Whoops! Windy day!

And these flowers

Reaching for the sun

That’s the kind of flowers I need, something I can’t kill.  Maybe just a little smaller though.  I don’t think the condo association would approve if I planted those on the property.

We saw this in a park

Broken heart?

along with quite a few homeless people.  I was kind of surprised as to how many homeless people there were.

We finally came to our first stop   Anyone recognize it?  It’s the Space Needle!  You can see the elevator going up on the side

Fancy dancy elevator

Our bus driver gave us a ticket to ride to the top of the Space Needle (included in the price of the excursion ya know), so we headed up.  What a view!

What a view!

Look!  There’s our ship

Hi Ship!

There was some work being done at the top.  They were revamping the whole thing.  Giving you a better view.  Of course I don’t know what the old view looked like so it is hard to compare but this view was pretty impressive.  They were installing Plexiglas benches by the outside walls.

Work guys

And look at this contraption 

I had to Google it to find out what it was used for.  Apparently they use this machine, which they had built specifically for this job, to hold the giant pieces of glass in place while the guys bolted them down.  The glass was craned up and then the machine grabbed it and placed it.  Wow!  What a machine, and the guy who worked the machine did it all with a little joy stick.  Playing  all those video games as a kid finally came in handy.  I wonder what the heck they’ll do with it once they’re all done?  And who will they hire to CLEAN those windows.  One field trip of school age children and those windows will be a mess.

Well the new glass certainly gives you a phenomenal view of Seattle and the mountains that surround it.  Good Job people!

When we got down from the Space Needle and were heading back to the bus, we saw this truck in the parking lot 

If you can’t read it, it says “Otis Elevator Company”.  Dang!  I’m glad we didn’t see that before we hopped on an elevator and took it up the 605 feet to the top.

We also noticed that they had these bikes

Rent me!

all over the place, and I mean all over.  You can just take it and drop it where ever you want.  It doesn’t have to be at a station or anything.  The bikes must have a tracking device on them so they know where they are.

Well we hopped back on the bus at our designated time and continued the tour.  As we toured around the city, I saw this billboard

Haha!

I got a pretty big chuckle out of that.  If that doesn’t make you think, I don’t know what will LOL.

Our next stop was the Pike Place Market.  It was quite a few blocks long, a few stories high and filled with a crap load of people.

OMG! Wall to Wall people!

We both hate crowds but we had some time to kill so we walked around.  This was supposed to be the place where they throw the fish around.  Didn’t see that.  We did see the huge line to get into the “first” Starbucks.  It was over a block long.  I decided I didn’t need coffee that bad.

Do you see that thing hanging from the inside of that store?  Curved blade and two handles on each corner?  They had those all over the place and in every gift shop we walked by.  I assume they are for cutting cheese.  I think I’ll stick with the old-fashioned cheese slicer  Works good for me 

To kill time we found a non “Starbucks” coffee shop and had some coffee to help kill the time.  We weren’t much into the shopping thing.  Finally we were able to hop back on the bus and she took us to the airport, that was the end of the tour of Seattle.  Mind you, if you LOVE to shop, that Pike Place market would have been the perfect place for you so don’t let us discourage you from visiting it…..if you ever get to Seattle that is .

I must say, the Seattle airport is big, and complicated.   When we arrived from Minnesota, the plane stopped in some obscure corner of the airport.  We had to exit the plane using a staircase and then there were buses for us to take back to the terminal!  This time, after we checked our luggage, we had to take a train thingie, to our gate.

The security level at this airport was so different from it was in Minneapolis.  In Minneapolis we had to take off our shoes, take the I-pad, the kindle, and our cell phones out of the back pack and lay them in a basket, not to mention, we had to take off belts, empty pockets and the glasses I had on top of my head and hanging from my shirt, I had to hold them in my hands while I stood in that big X-ray machine.  Then after all that, they had to pat down and wand my right knee, and I don’t even have a fake knee!   In Seattle, we left our shoes on, our belts on, the glasses hung from the front of my shirt, we left everything in the backpack and just put the contents of our pockets in a pocket in the backpack.  Much easier or maybe it was just because we were old people and didn’t look too much like terrorists, ya never know .

All in all, it was a fantastic vacation/cruise and for those of you with a bucket list, I definitely would add it to yours.