After spending about two months within the main Seattle and Seattle suburb areas since coming back from Canada (excluding the one week when I flew to Las Vegas to take care of some errands and meet up with friends), I decided it was time to go venture out a little bit more. I still have another session of petsitting that I need to do again for Erin in October, so I can’t leave the Seattle Metropolitan Area entirely yet, but I still made my way down to Tacoma on the far southern edge of Puget Sound to do some more exploring in a new area.

For my first tourist activity, I decided to go to the Museum of Glass. In order to get there, I walked from where I was staying at the Marriott Tacoma Down­town across the Chihuly Bridge of Glass.

The first section of the bridge was the Seaform Pavilion, available for viewing on the ceiling.

Next were the Crystal Towers, two towers that resembled deep aqua blue chunks of opaque glass assembled together.

Finally, there was the Venetian Wall, a large collection of shelves and compartments holding a variety of different pieces of glass art. It was a bit tricky taking a photo of it because it was so large, but I could only step back so far due to the limitations of the width of the bridge.

Outside the museum was an exhibit installed directly into a small manmade pond called Water Forest. From what I remember reading from the sign ex­plaining the piece, the clear glass is supposed to represent water itself, and how it rises and falls.

Inside the museum were various glass sculptures and other objects made out of glass—something that you’d expect from a place named the Museum of Glass. I had previously been to Chihuly Garden and Glass in Seattle, and the Museum of Glass reminded me a lot of that.

The first main section was the Viola A. Chihuly and North Galleries, and the exhibit on display was called “Boundless Curiosity: A Journey with Robert Minkoff.”

The next exhibit was called “What Are You Looking At? An Eccentric Chorus of Artists Working in Glass.”

Next up was my second favorite part of the museum, called “Out of the Vault: Soundtracks.” Unfortunately, this area was very dark and it was next to im­possible to get good photos here, but the displays here were interactive motion-sensing digital art pieces that would change depending on your pres­ence—you would place your hand or body in the line of sight of the sensor, and it would react to your movement.

The final section of the main exhibit hall was the Leonard and Norma Klorfine Foundation Gallery, featuring “Maestro Alfredo Barbini: Nature, Myth, and Magic” and “The David Huchthausen Collection.”

(As a disclaimer, I don’t fully recall which art pieces were exactly in which gallery; I posted them in chronological order along with their descriptions, and did my best to insert the captions in the proper place, but some art pieces might be listed off-by-one relative to the descriptions.)

My favorite part of the museum, and the part that sets it apart from the average museum, was the Hot Shop, in which they had a live glassblowing dem­onstration. I wasn’t aware that this was happening, but I had great fortune in my timing, as it started about an hour and a half after my arrival—the per­fect amount of time for me to browse through all the exhibits before making my way over to watch the show.

Not only was it cool to feel the heat of the furnaces from the audience seating area, but watching people working with molten glass put the entire mu­se­um into context and perspective. I thought the exhibits and galleries at the Museum of Glass were okay, but the integration of this live demonstration made it great.

If you’re visiting Tacoma as a tourist, I think the Museum of Glass could be one of the top places to visit as long as you are there for the live glassblowing demonstration (as opposed to seeing only the exhibits), and if you’re ok with paying a little extra, for the fusing workshops as well (which I did not do, as they only take place the second and forth weekends of each month, as of right now).

There’s been another heat wave in the Seattle Metropolitan Area lately, but the weather finally eased up today, so I seized the opportunity to go outside and explore the Pacific Bonsai Museum in Federal Way, Washing­ton, down by the intersection of Interstate 5 and the western starting point of Washing­ton State Route 18.

This has been a recurring sentiment every time I go to a specialty museum, but I did not realize that bonsai was so intense and involved. Prior to today, I just thought that bonsai was a method of tying up tree trunks to make them grow in unnatural ways. However, after going through the museum and read­ing a lot of the placards explaining the art of bonsai, I realized that it’s far more complex.

Usually, when you see bonsai trees, they are all the same very small trees with trunks and branches that are warped in strange ways. However, because this museum was a specialty museum, I was able to see a wide variety of bonsai trees, including some that seem like normal trees… but are a miniscule fraction of the size of the actual specie of tree.

My biggest takeaway from visiting this museum is that the art of bonsai is all about pa­tience, foresight, and forethought. Working with trees is far dif­fer­ent than other art forms or working with other living things. In many other art forms, you can generally get to your desired result with enough prac­tice and strategy, and other living things tend to be much more trainable and moldable. However, because trees grow at their own, very slow pace, it’s very difficult to get immediate feedback on changes you make to the tree, so it can take years or decades before you realize that you might have made a mistake.

The Pacific Bonsai Museum also had a lot of bonsai trees on display with extremely interesting backstories. My favorite one was a tree that had been sto­len, but because of the immense media coverage and pressure from the community, was magically found back in its place—presumably because the thief caved in and decided to return it.

If you’re ever in the area and have about an hour or so to spare, I recommend checking it out. Not only were the trees interesting to just look at, but if you also read the corresponding informational cards posted by each of the trees, it will be a fun learning experience. I wouldn’t say they’re particularly text-heavy compared to other museums, and they’re written in a way that will pique the interest of even non-enthusiasts.

As of my visit, admission was free, though there is a recommended donation of US$12.00 at the end of the exhibits, if you’re able to afford and are will­ing to contribute.

Bellevue is a pretty nice city, and probably one of my favorite areas in the Seattle Metropolitan Area. I generally don’t like downtown areas of cities, but Bellevue has managed to keep their downtown clean, under control, inviting, and not overly congested.

The Seattle Metropolitan Area is fairly large, and while I was driving from one end of Lake Washington to the other, I decided to take a stop in between in Bellevue to check out some of the Marriott resorts and be a tourist.

One of the places I stopped by was the Bellevue Botanical Garden, a short distance east of Washington Interstate 405. There’s another heat wave that was expected to hit (and is here now), so I managed to squeeze in this trip right before when the weather was still tolerable.

For some reason, it was a bit tricky to keep track of where I was going—the trails weren’t actually that long, so only a short duration of walking would make me end up in a completely different area.

I believe I started near the Courtyard and Tapestry Hedge, went over to the Perennial Border, walked through the Fuchsia Garden, then started walking south on the Tateuchi Loop Trail. I connected onto Lost Meadow Trail, went over to The Ravine Experience Bridge, completed the Ravine Experience Trail, then circled back around and reconnected back to Tateuchi Loop Trail. I tried visiting the Native Discovery Garden and Bellville Arboretum, but I wasn’t quite sure whether I was actually there, or if the markings on the map were misplaced, as it just looked like the rest of the garden. For the last por­tion of my visit, I did a loop around the Yao Garden on the Yao Garden Trail, then went back to the parking lot.

Tempo had a small company get-together in the Seattle Metropolitan Area earlier today, so my friend and employee Ben Shumaker came to visit. Before the gathering, I showed him around downtown Seattle, then we decided to visit the Museum of Museums, an art museum in the First Hill district west of Seattle University.

It was a very strange museum. The best way that I can think of describing it is that it had an extremely progressive feel to it, and I noticed that it was try­ing to push some extremist liberal viewpoints, some subtly and some others not so subtly. It’s almost as if it was a museum dedicated to forming a col­lec­tion of art pieces that would otherwise not be accepted for display at mainstream art museums.

Funny enough, I actually found it pretty amusing. Although I personally don’t agree with a lot of the messaging of a lot of the art pieces, it was still very refreshing to see something different, bold, and unrelenting.

This was somewhat of an impromptu visit, so I didn’t bring my good camera and only had my phone for photos. They also didn’t have air conditioning, so I was dripping sweat the entire time and we wrapped up our tour quicker than anticipated so we could get out of the heat and make our way over to the company event. Admission was US$20.00 per person, which was unusually high for a museum of this size.

Overall, I don’t regret going, but it’s definitely not something that I would return to, nor is it something I’d recommend to others if you have limited time in Seattle and want to get the most out of your time and money.

While in Everett, and before heading back to the central Seattle Metropolitan Area, I decided to do one more tourist activity up north, and selected the Schack Art Center.

Admission to the art exhibits was free, and it seemed like they made most of their money off classes that they offer. Unfortunately, there were none a­vail­a­ble at the time that I visited, though I was still able to peek in and look at glassblowing equipment.

Afterwards, I snapped some photos of my favorite art pieces.

A lot of Calgary’s interesting tourist attractions are either outside or involve some form of hybrid outdoors walking. Not wanting to lose all my ex­plo­ra­tion time to the relentless rain that has been pummeling (and on some occasions, flooding) Calgary since my arrival, I decided to find an indoors ac­tiv­i­ty and stumbled across a music museum inside Studio Bell, home of the National Music Centre.

One of the first sections by the entrance was closed due to a special event, but the rest of the museum was open. The museum was a fairly traditional mixed-media interactive museum, with a lot of displays, lots of audiovisual material, a lot of opportunities to go hands-on, and a lot of text explaining the history and science behind the various musical topics.

There was a little section about the early 2000s in a chronological timeline that featured Avril Lavigne, which I obviously got very excited about because of how obsessed I was with her as a teenager. It’s not often that Avril Lavigne gets an entire spotlight to herself, but then I realized and remembered that it was because she is Canadian and was born in Ontario.

Unfortunately, the day that I visited happened to coincide with what appeared to be an elementary or middle school field trip, so the museum was flooded with children the entire time I was there. This was unfortunate for some of the hands-on activities, as there were always kids occupying all the stations. When I did manage to find an open station to play a guitar, the guitar was greasy… so I promptly put it down, upon which a hawk-eyed little girl swooped in and immediately took my spot.

I definitely would’ve enjoyed the museum more if I had a bit more peace and quiet to thoroughly experience everything that was available, but it was still a nice visit, and definitely something unique and uncommon when it comes to topics of museums. Admission was “pay what you can”; I paid the recommended CA$15, but if you take a visit and have unlucky timing like I did, they would let you in for free for a subsequent visit to pick up where you left off.