North to Alaska! (Stopping in Seattle First)

A long time ago we started making plans with my parents and my siblings and their spouses to go on a cruise to Alaska. It began as an idea and soon took off as a definite desire and then we were making actual plans and reservations for the trip. That gave us all something fun to look forward to way off in the future. What seemed like a long way off in the distance was finally upon us.

Glen and I wanted to take a few extra days doing things before the cruise so we began our trip several days before the rest of the family. We drove to Richland, Washington the first day and ate dinner at Tony Roma's.

The second day was temple day. We attended the Columbia River Temple in the morning.

Then we drove to Seattle and attended an afternoon session in the Seattle Temple.

 

We ate dinner at Claim Jumper and then walked all around the Center Street Plaza to get a little exercise after two days of lots of sitting.

On our third day, we enjoyed a full day of activities in Seattle. The Public Market Center entertained us for quite a while.

 There were beautiful hanging flower planters on the store fronts and flowers adorning all the buildings.

 Pike Place Market had a pig theme going on for some reason.

 There were lots of people selling fruits and vegetables, fish, flowers and all sorts of other stuff.

At Pike Place Fish Market whenever a fish order was placed, the guy in the orange waders would find the right fish and throw it back to the guys in the back weighing the fish. They would give a few tosses back and forth creating a little fish-throwing entertainment for the people passing by.
We saw this man and his pet parrot sitting in the food court part of the market. 

There were street musicians positioned all throughout the market streets. The one that really caught my attention was the man who rolled out a piano to the street corner and played beautiful classical music. He looked and acted half crazy, but he could sure play that shortened piano exceptionally well.

Most of the food places didn't look very appealing. We finally settled on Three Girls as our lunch destination. It was good food and we had some good entertainment sitting at the lunch counter watching all the action going on in front of us of the workers hustling to feed their many customers.

Our walk down a back alley proved a good move when we came upon Gum Wall right by the Market Theater. The brick wall is by the box office and theater goers started putting blobs of chewing gum on the wall and it has now become a tourist attraction. Some people make small works of art out of the gum.

We took a very long walk down by the water. We started by the ferris wheel, walked along the boardwalk and then walked along a path from pier to pier. The Seattle Space Needle is in the background right above my head.

That evening we ate dinner at 3 Pigs Bar-B-Q. What better way to start our pigging-out-on-the-cruise experience???

After dinner we enjoyed watching the Opening Ceremonies of the Olympics in our hotel room. We were lamenting the fact we hadn't realized we had planned our trip right during this big event. Oh well. We'd just have to make due without being able to watch all the athletic events.

We went to bed anxiously awaiting the next day when we would be boarding the cruise ship and hooking up with the rest of the family.