Museum Hopper

on the first thursday , my classmate, priscilla, and i went to the burke museum of natural history and culture up on the university of washington campus.  it's considered one of the better museums in seattle. we headed up after work on the bus to check it out.  priscilla has been living up near the UW campus and knew where to go.   it was an interesting combination of stuff like the royal bc museum .  the artifacts and exhibits definitely overlapped between the two museum.  i enjoyed the photographs of the owls .  i would have loved a little more details on how many hours or shots they had to take to get some of these amazing action shots.  the wolves exhibit was pretty neat, a little simplistic, but interesting to learn about the wolves.   the downstairs is the "culture" part of the museum.  it had a section of the "first nations" that had a number of the same or similar objects from the royal bc museum including a section about henry hunt, the same n

on the fourth of july, my boyfriend and i rode the ducks of seattle .  i booked the tickets in advance and we left from the westlake location in downtown seattle.  i figured it would be a good way to get us around seattle, end the weekend and get on the water for a little bit. we arrived at the stop a half hour early like we were supposed to and waited in a line a bit to get on the duck/boat/bus.  we were a little late taking off since two ticket holders arrived late to westlake.  this was the beginning of a not so great ride with these two.... we headed directly from westlake up towards the north side of lake union, hopped in the lake there, boated around, then headed down on the pier, up 1st avenue past pike market to wrap up the ride.  we spent about equidistant time in the water and on land, which i was really happy about.  it was great to be on the lake on the 4th of july.  we could see everyone gathering to watch the fireworks as well as the many, many boats that were out on

over the long weekend, my boyfriend and i went to the san juan islands off the coast of washington state and vancouver island.  while we were there, we stopped at the charming whale museum .    the museum is on the edge of town, so about three blocks from the ferry.  it had a nice sized gift shop on the first floor and then the museum is on the second floor.   the topics in the museum covered are the history of the whales, behavior and data about the whales, and then what is threatening the whales and what we can do to preserve them.  it was very well done and gave enough information.  i liked how they focused and gave details about the three pods that live around the san juan islands.  it definitely added fuel to the fire; we did not see the whales this trip and now, i really want to see them.  the museum was very spacious.  the usual problem with these museums is that they seem to get tired and run down.  it was obvious that this museum was well cared for and updated on a regula

this week, our internship company hosted a happy hour (or welcome event) at the seattle aquarium.  we had the entire place to ourselves after it closed, which was fantastic.  they nicely invited our managers, significant others if we have them and any children.  the size of the party is significantly less than would normally be at the museum.  they were serving us fish (along with meat) which was sort of an interesting twist on eating in an aquarium. the museum seems to be quite spacious with a large area when you walk in and then more of the exhibits in the back with the large mammals (the best part) in a second building.  the second building was pretty interesting.  it was designed to be "half open" as parts of it were open to the exterior.    some of the tanks were visible from the top and below, which is a great viewing point.   i also enjoyed looking at the octopus and the sea stars, which you can touch (gently). most important, i got to see the sea otters!  they