Seattle

Hi. We are all glad to be close to the end of the driving part of the holiday. We travelled 6+ hours to Medford, swam, ate chinese (massive containers arrived, we could only get through about one quarter of it), slept, drove 5ish hours to Portland, swam, ate not great teryaki, slept, drove, finally reaching Seattle.
Yesterday we went into the city for the day, starting off at the Science centre. We were slightly underwhelmed, as it appeared to be very similar to the Imaginarium back home. After looking at the 'speed' display we went on the dukw. Yes, a tour that drives you around Seattle and then takes to the water, in an army dukw (the model number of the craft we were in). A real hit with the boys. The tour guide was very noisy and funny (added in by E), playing loud music and changing gag hats to suit his jokes. The boys thought it was great. Oh, I forgot to mention that they sold quacking toys to many (MANY!!) of the kids on the tour. So as we quacked, sang, and generally yelled our way around Seattle, Nyah slept and we learnt a little of the history of the place. The city centre is constructed of non flammible materials after the fire of 1889, apparently even the water pipes were made of timber before then, and as such is very dense looking. It is also extensively tree'd, so quite pretty. They have a policy where 1% of all building costs must be spent on public art, so there is lots of art. One of the funnier sculptures in a rock (a la natural), and 10 foot away is a sculpture of the rock. That was at one of the new millions of dollars baseball stadiums, and probably cost 100's of thousands of dollars. Another one was of 6 figures and a dog, waiting for a now non-existant train. The sculpture had so much trouble with a local politician, that he put the politicians face on the dog. Once on the water we enjoyed looking at all the house boats and homes on water. They only allow 500 homes on water, and they are really plush. Our guide pointed out the apartment and home used in Sleepless in Seattle. Caleb's favourite thing was all the water planes flying and landing near us (apparently Lake Union is the only officially recognised water airport in the world). Seattle is beautiful from the water, much more like I imagined it, rather than where we are staying, highwayed suburbia (a little note telling us about the dangers of the are tucked in to the hotels compendium). After the tour we went back (reluctantly) to the science centre. We watched an Imax movie on the local Mt St Helen, which erupted in 1980. Elijah just wants to see lava, but alas, like NZ's mud pooles, there was only dust and ashes. It was really interesting. Finally we discovered the rest of the centre, and had a great time. We made patterns, looked at dinosours, enjoyed the northern hemispheres stars at the planeterium (with a short look at the southern hemisphere at our request - most people did not know about the southern cross, as they cant see it - they only see "the North Star"), played in the tiny tots area (Nyah can now slide all by herself and climb up stairs quite easily - getting down stairs is another matter!) and went in the butterfly room. Heaps of fun. We finished the day with a quick drive past Microsoft, for inspiration :-) Today we are driving to Canada, only a 3 hour drive (we think). We are staying in Vancouver for the next week, before heading to Kelowna next weekend. Seattle is definately on our list to explore more on the way home.