Rainy Day Aquarium Visit

One thing that we've enjoyed almost the entire time we've lived here in Washington is our membership to the Seattle Aquarium. Having a membership makes it easy to just pop in and stay for a little while instead of feeling like we need to "get our money's worth." This holiday weekend was a bit of a bummer, weatherwise. We decided to head down to the aquarium because it had been a couple months since we'd been. Traffic was terrible because of the Seattle Folk Life Festival going on and also the Pike Place Market Street Fair, but we figured that we'd be safe from the crowds down on the piers... boy were we wrong! We rounded the corner onto Alaskan Way and saw a gazillion taxi cabs and a huge cruise ship, the Norweigan Pearl, at the port. Uh-oh! What did this mean? That all the passengers on that ship had off loaded to see the sites of Seattle for the afternoon. The line for the aquarium was longer than I've ever seen-- it spanned about a quarter of a city block. Thank goodness for our membership and that special "members only" line that required no waiting! We didn't stay for long, only about an hour total, it was too crowded, but the kids were happy to be there after such a 'long' break!

A few pics from our rainy day escape:

Also worth noting is that this was Piper's first outing sitting in the stroller like a "big girl." I was afraid she'd be overstimulated or get stressed, but she seemed to enjoy the people watching!