Sailing Lake Union

The friends who hosted our trip to the Seattle area (Port Orchard) are taking sailing lessons and we were able to go sailing with them on Seattle's Lake Union.

Our friends take lessons from and rent and borrow wooden sailing boats at the Center for Wooden Boats.

It's great to be out on the dark blue water quietly sailing.

We went sailing on Lake Union on a weekday and then on a weekend day and it was of course much busier on the weekend day.

It's fun to watch the seaplanes land and take off on Lake Union.

We were surprised at how much fun sailing on Lake Union in urban Seattle could be.

We also got to experience Lake Union as part of the Locks Cruise described in our blog post "Ballard Locks: Argosy Cruises Locks Cruise".

Chihuly Garden and Glass

We likely only went to Chihuly Garden and Glass because it was covered on the Seattle City Pass that we purchased, but we are happy that we did.

Chihuly Garden and Glass features astonishing and illuminated glasswork inside a nice museum and in its beautiful outdoor garden.

I was surprised at how interested I was in the fantastic details and colors of the glass art.

The walkway to the garden area is also beautiful.

The garden mixes more beautiful artwork with beautiful vegetation.

There are also unbeatable ground-level views of the Space Needle from this garden.

Seattle's Space Needle

One of Seattle's most well-known landmarks and tourist attactions is the Space Needle.

The Space Needle is at the Seattle Center.

The Space Needle is easily seen from Lake Union.

The Space Needle is likewise easily spotted from Puget Sound.

After crusing on the Locks Cruise, we were able to use the Space Needle as the target landmark for our walk to the Seattle Center.

The Space Needle was by far the busiest attraction we experienced while in the Seattle area staying with our friends who live in Port Orchard.

We waited in the lines for the elevators for about 30 minutes, but we had the gift shop and its shoppers to look at while waiting.

We could also see that the lines could have been potentially much longer as we at least joined the end of the queue just outside of the main building, but there was lots of space set apart outside the main building for the line to wrap around.

We had visited the Space Needle on our visit to Seattle many years earlier, but it was still impressive to see Seattle from the Space Needle's observation deck.

We used the Seattle City Pass to visit the Space Needle.

Viewing Seattle from above via the Space Needle is even better than viewing the Space Needle from the ground.