While staying in La Conner, we had a fun day in Seattle on the fourth of July. We met my friend, Veronica and her husband, Carl at the iconic and “world famous” Pike Place Market.
We arrived a little early so that we could enjoy the market. On the walk over from our parking spot, we noticed a really cute umbrella store. With very interesting umbrella designs and photos of wedding parties with umbrellas. But we found out later that the store sells mostly to tourists since Seattleites don’t use umbrellas 🙂
Pike Place Market is Seattle’s original Farmers Market, established in 1907. It’s a colorful mega farmers market with produce, meats, specialty foods, crafts, restaurants, flowers, fresh seafood and more.
My favorite vendors when I visited in the past were the Pike Place Fish guys who throw the fish and yell. Unfortunately, they were not there. Good for them that they took the fourth of July off, but I missed them. There was other wonderful seafood though not quite as entertaining.
We met our friends by Rachel the piggy bank, a 550 pound bronze sculpture that is the mascot of the market. “Legend has it that if you rub Rachel’s snout and make a donation, you’ll have good luck.”
People line up to put money into this piggy bank (while being photographed of course). Donations support the Pike Market Food Bank, Senior Center, Medical Clinic, Child Care and Pre-School and an assisted living facility. Rachel has raised over $200,000. Brilliant!
And near Rachel the pig was a guy playing a saw with a bow. An interesting sound. Sort of like a B science fiction movie aliens metallic sound.
Veronica, Carl, Hector and I had lunch at a brewery where I had another beer flight. We had a marvelous time together and we promised we’d spend a little more time in Seattle on our next visit.
As we left, we spotted a wedding couple with their wedding party being photographed. Hector and I come across weddings all the time, and, of course, he always takes a photograph. This group was especially cute because the bridesmaids all had orange umbrellas. Such a cute idea!
After lunch we stopped at Seattle’s Museum of Flight. One of the largest private air and space museums in the world that Hector really wanted to see. I’ll let him take it from here.
Hector here at the keyboard instead of the camera 🙂 Well, Seattle is Boeing country and this museum is located adjacent to Boeing Field. A general aviation airport also an airport used by Boeing for various purposes over the years. Currently they use it for final testing and delivery operations of new 737 aircraft.
Although the museum is not a Boeing museum, as you might imagine, Boeing is well represented in the collection. Including a couple of interesting artifacts like the first Boeing airplane factory now displaying the history of Boeing (the red barn) and the prototype of the 747, serial number 1, made so many years ago. Cool. 
A Lockheed Super Constellation. Such a graceful airplane.
A B47 bomber from the Strategic Air Command scary cold war days.
And the first jet Air Force One. A Boeing 707-120 delivered in 1959 that replaced Eisenhowers’s Lockheed Super Constellation. It was used as the presidential aircraft by Eisenhower, JFK, Johnson, and Nixon. And then in the VIP fleet until 1996 carrying Kissinger, Nikita Krushchev and many others.
There is a British Airways Concorde that you can walk inside.
A well done collection of military aircraft through the years. From WWI early flying machines.
To WWII Warbirds.
An impressive collection of kiddie planes that could be “flown” at an adorable little “airport”. Built by one of the volunteers!
And the impressive Great Gallery with a broad mix of artifacts hanging in mid flight.
And a space gallery with a collection of hardware. But the centerpiece was the shuttle simulator used by all the shuttle crews and moved here from the Johnson Space Center in Houston.
Brenda was a great sport being dragged to yet another airplane museum. My appetite for this stuff is pretty high 🙂
All in all a really fun day in Seattle.
Note: As we publish this post, we’re about to enter Canada to spend a few weeks there. Our next post will be about the beautiful Olympic Peninsula, our last stop in the U.S. before crossing the border.
~ Brenda and Hector
Isn’t Seattle so great! We made our first visit in June of 2012. Our daughter flew out to join us. Your blog just recapped some of our fun times. My daughter and I did the Pike Place food tour which was outstanding. Of course, we had to do Boeing with a son that is an airline pilot!
Where in Canada are you heading? We are just planning our trip to Jasper, Banff, and Lake Louise for September.
Pike Place Market is definitely a favorite. We’re heading to Vancouver Island, then Vancouver. We’ll be in Jasper, Banff and Lake Louise in August 🙁 so will miss you. We cross the border back to the U.S. on August 26th, have to make it to Denver in late September for annual stuff. Where are you just prior to Canada? Maybe we will cross paths.
Brenda
Brenda, we are coming from the east going through northern ND and then planning to get to east Glacier by mid August. So it doesn’t look good for our paths to cross at this point unless you are coming into the US near Glacier!? But we will be staying west for a very long time so maybe we’ll meet up in the near future.
Well, we’ll be in Waterton Lakes NP from Aug 22 to Aug 26 and Glacier NP from Aug 26 to Sep 2. So close! But if we miss each other, we’ll be staying in the west for a while too, so hopefully there will be another opportunity.
Brenda
Such memories you are refreshing for me… LOVE Seattle and Olympic National Park. As ever, thank you for keeping us with you! Joe and Jean
Miss you guys! We’ll be in Denver in mid-September, hope you’ll be there.
Brenda
Umbrellas for a wedding, cute! I like the idea of decorating with them. We drove past the air museum and considered it but ran out of time, looks like ti was a good one.
Yes, a very cute idea. The museum was definitely a good one.
Brenda
What a fun post. I really like your WordPress format. I’m using Blogger, and I don’t think it’s as good as WordPress. How do you like it?
My husband is a big fan of these kinds of museums too, and I try hard to be patient and even appreciative. I wonder if you’ve been to the Evergreen Aviation and Space Museum in McMinnville, OR? And the Boeing Plant in Everett, WA? You probably have, being the fan you are, but if not, I think you’d love them.
Thank you! We started on WordPress.com, and we did like it. Now we’ve upgraded to self-hosted (WordPress.org) in preparation for some other things we’d like to do, but really haven’t changed much yet.
We’ve not been to Evergreen Aviation, nor the Boeing Plant, although they are on Hector’s list 🙂 It helps to get a recommendation, though.
Brenda
Loved your photos of our city. I was surprised to see the umbrella shop so I guess I need to re-visit the market area. Laughed at your comment that Seattle folks don’t use umbrellas. You are so right! I often say that we “dash between the drops”! Your blog and photos are great reminders of places to see in Washington. Thanks!
Welcome to our blog! It was funny for us to find out that the umbrellas were for the tourist only. Dashing between the drops sounds okay if the drops are not too big. We hope to return to Washington next spring.
Brenda
We love Seattle too! I think Hector and Steve are the same when it comes to airplanes. They never get tired of going into this kinds of museum. And like you Brenda, we are game and tag along and most of the time I enjoyed it too.
Thanks Hector for the narratives, Steve enjoyed reading it and nodding as well. He and his pilot buddies flew on a small plane to see the museum years ago. So I was spared when we passed by their in 2012, we did not have to stop 🙂
Enjoy Canada and their expensive beer and wines 🙁
Yes, I enjoy it, especially that we usually go to the really nice museums. But I do have a limit 🙂 Steve and Hector would make a nice pair hitting one of those museums. We’re in Canada, but we brought in a lot of beer and wine and didn’t have to pay duty! More on that in the next post. Yay!
Brenda