Seattle Tour Part 2

The second day of the Seattle trip started with a tour of the Space Needle. After seeing the views from the top, everybody headed back down and wandered around the gift shop for a while before going next door to the Chihuly Glass Gardens.

Dale Chihuly is a famous artist who creates designs from glass, and his artwork at this museum is on display both inside and outdoors. The exhibit in Seattle opened in 2012 (which is why I didn't remember seeing it on my last trip to Seattle in 2005).

Some of the indoor displays:

Glass Forest

Sea Life Tower

A close-up of a section of the Sea Life Tower

Persian Ceiling
This was an amazing room with light shining down the walls
from above the colored glass in the ceiling.

the giant Mille Fiori (which means "a thousand flowers")

The Mille Fiori takes up an entire room. This is the back side.

The front side of the Mille Fiori.

Float boat

Float boats inspired by Venice, Italy

Chandeliers & Tower

Two of the designs in the Macchia Forest

The huge Glass House with the
100-foot-long hanging floral sculpture.

The following are some of the outdoor displays in the outdoor gardens, which were separated into colored sections. The colored glass art pieces were divided among areas with live plants that matched or complemented them. It was truly gorgeous! I spent a lot of time outside admiring the gardens, and once again I was so, so grateful for the beautiful weather we were lucky to have! 

I just LOVE this shade of blue!

Reeds on Logs

This dark section was just stunning!

In contrast to the neighboring dark section,
this bright section was bold and beautiful!

I loved the orange section the best.
The tall lime green icicle tower is in the background.

The red crystal tower.

Ammon's favorite was "The Sun",
which I thought looked like the Tree of Life.
It stands in black mondo grass in the center of the gardens.

Ammon, Tommy, and Hunter

I sat in a spot in front of "The Sun", and offered to take everybody in our group's photo as they passed by. I got a lot of pictures taken in front of it! I enjoyed taking the time to just peacefully sit in the gardens and watch our group take in the stunning sights around us! After a few photos, I got the idea for everybody to start doing jump shots (I thought of my sister Tabbi who always does it when she's on vacation in front of sights, and knew this was the perfect opportunity), which was SOOO much fun to see and take pictures of! Some of the chaperones even did a group jump shot together! This is one of my favorite photos of the trip:

The Chihuly Glass Gardens was one of my favorite places we visited on our tour. I was surprised at how much the youth enjoyed it, too. All the kids were astounded at the beautiful artwork, and really revered the sights and the atmosphere. It was a joy to be with them and experience this gorgeous place together. After seeing the gardens, we all met up outside the steps of the Space Needle again.

All 44 of the musical touring students from Salmon

Then we headed to lunch together at the nearby Armory. It's like a giant food court with multiple restaurants and a large seating area inside. It also had cultural exhibits and promotional booths inside. 

I got this funny pic off of Ammon's phone of Josi trying to
push the wheel-shaped sign with the boys in & on it!

There was a Japanese Festival going on, so as we ate in the armory, there was some dancers with costumes who performed on a small stage for us. There were also Japanese exhibits all around. I found a Japanese food both that made "Takoyakis", so I ordered some...

Doesn't this look delicious?! "Takoyaki" is balls of octopus meat with dried Kale and smoked tuna flakes on top. It was...chewy and interesting. Now I can say I've eaten octopus!

I ate with a group of chaperones inside the armory, and we all had little samples of each other's yummy and unique dishes. I also ordered and ate pot pies for lunch--one from England with some of kind of meat in it, and a super delicious small desert pie with rhubarb and lemon. 

This was the last time I wore these earrings--I lost one of them on the trip.

Then I showed the chaperone group an awesome display of bonsai that I'd found by the Octopus food stand. 

Guess what? It wasn't until I took the chaperones to see the display that I realized all the mini trees that were on display were FAKE!!! It was a display of artificial bonsai trees! I was so irritated and embarrassed that I didn't notice it the first time around before I took all the adults to see them! 

After lunch, we met back up together again by the Space Needle. 

There are giant sculptures all around the area surrounding the Needle, like these:

Seeing Ammon trying to get down off of what he'd just climbed...

 ...reminded me of this on our family vacation the previous month: 

Thankfully, this time he did jump/slide down instead of climbing back down the way he came up like on our family trip! I was proud of him for facing his fear!

Our next stop on the tour: the EMP (Experience Music Project Museum).