In September, four members of our travel group, Linda Cook, Sandi Schoenman, Shirley Wheeler and Pat Winkle, flew to Seattle for a five day visit. We started our tour with a harbor cruise in the afternoon, followed by sunset and dinner at the top of the Space Needle in the Seattle Center.  Mastering the Monorail system, we returned several times to the Center where we enjoyed the beauty of the Chihuly Glass Museum and Gardens, lunch at the museum’s eclectic restaurant and an interesting visit to the Museum of POP Culture, formerly the EMP. That museum, a Frank Gehry architectural design, is committed to ideas that fuel contemporary popular culture, including exhibits of Star Trek, Nirvana, WOW (The World of Wearable Art) and much more!

Over the next several days we took a trolley tour of the city, visited the Olympic Sculpture Park, Aquarium, Pike Place Market, the Seattle Art Museum and the Central Public Library, which has received architectural awards for its design. We were very impressed with its design, unique mechanized book return system and, of course, its resources.

We were even adventurous, riding the Great Wheel and the Wings over Washington (like Disney’s Soaring over California). We finished our tour with a visit to the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation Exhibit, learning about the many projects they fund to improve education, reduce hunger and poverty, fight disease, empower women and “inspire people to take action to change the world.”