Day 17: Father’s Day in Seattle

Our first full day in Seattle was pretty amazing. I had scheduled a kids walking tour with Seattle by foot for the morning. With Katie still sick, Linda stayed home with her so she could rest and get well. John and I drove with Zoe and Sophia downtown to park in the Pike Place parking garage. It was sure interesting navigating the streets of downtown and the parking garage with the Suburban. We only had about 4 inches of clearance in the garage.

After getting parked and finding our way to the market, we started with eating at The Crumpet Shop. The crumpets were pretty amazing. We walked through a small area of the market before meeting up with the tour guide. The tour is designed for kids to show them things about the city that will interest them and provide them some history. It was entertaining and very informative for John and I as well as the kids. One of my favorite places she took us was the Community Senior Garden in the market. It is a beautiful garden on one of the rooftops that grows food for the food bank that supports the low income seniors in the area. I was amazed by the number and variety of flowers in the market, the fresh produce, and all the local vendors. I have never seen anything like it. It is truly a treasure of Seattle.

After taking the kids through the market and letting the sample some of the foods, including ice cream, the tour guide walked us to the Seattle Art Museum (SAM) to show the girls the exhibit in the main lobby and to a small art project. Next, she took the kids to see the underground transit station and explained how it works. The girls loved the tour and I would highly recommend it to anyone visiting Seattle with kids. A few of the other things we got to see on the tour were The Gum Wall, the Giant Shoe museum and the famous fish throwing in the market.

With today being Father’s Day, we celebrated John by exploring the Living Computers Museum after we finished up in the market area. I had come across the museum while researching online things to do in Seattle but didn’t really know much about it. We spent about 3 hours there and could have spent all day. John was in heaven with the historical displays of computers as well as new technology. Almost everything can be touched and played with. The girls loved it also. There are so many hands-on activities to help them learn programming and about various technologies that the girls really didn’t want to leave when it was closing time.

That evening John grilled dinner and we ate outside on the patio. The weather has been really good here so far. All in all I think we had a very good Father’s Day.