Seattle offers a discount booklet of admission vouchers for seven attractions, of which you can do five. We took a look, and thought we would do two and perhaps a third, so we passed on the booklet. We headed over this morning to take in the Chihuly Garden and Glass, and The Museum of Pop Culture. Turns out the hotel has a complimentary car service around central Seattle, so we opted for this for the 10 minute ride.
Dale Chihuly is a Washington Native who works extensively in very complex glass sculptures. His works and installations are big, and the technical diffulties in constructing his works are significant.
I’ll just let them speak for themselves. They all have names, but I don’t remember any of them.
Up next was the Museum of Popular Culture (MoPOP), which had a number of exhibits we looked at: fantasy in popular culture (movies, books, etc ), Jimi Hendrix, and Kurt Cobain. Both musicians were from Washington. We didn’t bother with the video game or Marvel characters exhibits.

Guitar sculpture at MoPOP, July 2018
From there we took the monorail back to downtown. The monorail and the entire Seattle Center, where these attractions along with the Space Needle and lots of other stuff, were built for the World’s Fair in 1962.
We tried to have lunch at PF Chang’s, which sounded encouraging when the waiter said they have a special menu of garlic-free items. If you’ve ever been in Chang’s, you know the menu is pretty long. So here’s the complete menu of garlic free items:
- White rice
- Brown rice
- Tofu with asparagus, broccoli, shiitake and carrots
- A number of deserts
Obviously that wasn’t going to work. But we found a great restaurant called the Yard House with 110 beers on tap. We only tried two. But the food was also good.
Later in the afternoon we went to an area called Ballard, where there are a couple of blocks of cute stores and restaurants. We saw them. We didn’t buy anything or eat anything. But on the way back, Sally found a chocolate store and bought something. They had a very cool piece of art, a larger-than-life portrait made out of different colored miniatures.

You have a chocolate face, July 2018