Continued..

Sorry for the delay, I've been busy. We now return to our feature presentation...


We ended up being the only people in our tour for Safeco Field. It was early, and kind of nasty outside so I imagine people wanted to stay indoors. We followed the tour guide around as he told the story of Nintendo chairman, Shigeru Miyamoto and other local businessmen, saved the Mariners from being sold out to another town. As usually happens once a day Microsoft was causing problems for me. They were holding a pep rally, I imagine something like this happened during that day:



One can hope. We went around to all the various features of Safeco Field, including the press area and the VIP lounge. It was an interesting experience, but not overly exciting. I think it'd be a neat thing to bring a child to, or any huge baseball fan. We were a bit let down that neither the Seahawks nor the Mariners were playing that weekend. Our tour guide was nice and they went out of their way to make up for not being able to get on the field. (Damn you, Microsoft! Damn you!)

After Safeco, we were going to scope out the Seattle Underground Tour - but there are some stairs leading down to it, so we decided not to attempt it with the fragile Christina on board.

So we went onto the Argosy Lakes cruise which was disembarking shortly. It was on the other side of downtown Seattle, so we charted the course and got on our way. We got there without about 20 minutes spare time, so we scouted out possible restaurant spots. We ended up in a deli down the road from the harbor. It was a small place, that had teriyaki and sandwiches for the office buildings surrounding them. We both got sandwiches and tried to hurry to get back to the boat.

There was a few hectic moments as we tried to hussle back to the boat. We made it right on time, and were off and about 2 minutes after getting seated. The Lake Cruise was interesting, they have a tour guide that points out the various attractions that are being passed as you go off in a little yacht. The lake included a bunch of houseboats which are smaller than most apartments I've ever lived in, but that cost millions of dollars to buy and maintain. The tour goes past Medina, which is renowned for not only Bill Gates' estate, but also many other corporate executives ranging from dot-coms to Starbucks. They take special care to point out Bill Gates' house, which ends up being more uncomfortable than entertaining with the invasion of privacy. But anyway, we got pictures, and ended up moving off of the windy top of the yacht to the front end and had the whole trip back to ourselves in the front of the yacht. The weather ended up being really nice.

We headed to the Space Needle next. Again, using the GoCard we got in for free. The Space Needle wasn't as interesting as it should be for a $15 admission to the top. They cram a bunch of people into the elevator, with some luck you get a good view going up. The staff was relatively rude, as well, it just wasn't that wonderful of an experience. Once we got up top, we attempted to get a good view. Christina was green, not with envy but with sickness. In case you aren't aware, the Space Needle is pretty high, like in space but not really. I got a couple good photos of the sun escaping through some clouds and some neat pictures at the ground and at a news helicopter on the roof of the news building. It gives a good depth, if there's demand for it who hasn't seen it at other places, I'll post a few shots here just leave a comment. Towards the end of our Space Needle, it started sprinkling so we headed back down.

After the Space Needle, we headed to the Experience Music Project, which is down in the Seattle Center across the way from the Needle. The EMP is a huge draw, built by resident millionaire Paul Allen. We got in about 15 minutes before they closed, in a stroke of luck we got 2 free tickets to the EMP valid for a year, because they had already shut down their GoCard machine. We took the 15 minutes and walked around it to see if we should make a point to come back with our free tickets prior to leaving town. We walked through the Jimi Hendrix experience, which was neat but not all that exciting. I think in the 15 minutes there we saw all that we would have been interested in.

After EMP we tried to get into the Sci/Fi museum but they had already closed the doors. We'll have to save that one for our next trip. All in all we got a good amount of fun out of the GoCards. I think the best value is having at least 2 days, which gives you enough time for making much more than your money's worth out of them.

We headed back to the hotel, then to a nearby McDonalds for dinner. Then we turned in for a crazy early morning as the American Idol auditions truly begin.

Stay tuned for crazy umbrella attacks, crazy nervous auditions, and the make it or break it time for almost 2000 Pac NW Idol Wannabes.