After our visit to the Seattle Aquarium and the Space Needle, our final stop of the day was at Chihuly Garden and Glass, a museum and exhibit of Dale Chihuly’s glasswork.

I adore animals, so out of today’s three attractions, the aquarium was my favorite, but the glass museum came in a close second. I had never seen any­thing like this before, and it was interesting seeing something seemingly as plain and boring as glass be sculpted into such interesting art pieces.

Similar to the aquarium, the glass museum also had both an indoor and outdoor portion. The outdoor segment had glass art pieces mixed in with the gar­den, and it was interesting not only to see man-made art mixed in with nature, but to see the reflections of surrounding attractions on the glass.

After our trip to the Seattle Aquarium, our next stop was the Space Needle, a spire and observation deck in Seattle Center.

With a name like “Space Needle,” I thought this would be an astronomically tall structure with explosive views in every direction. Unfortunately, I was a bit disappointed, as it was actually only 605 feet tall.

To put that into perspective, the condominium I live at in Las Vegas stands just shy of 500 feet tall, and the Stratosphere nearby on the Strip stands nearly double the height of the Space Needle, at 1,149 feet. I had actually also recently dined in at the Top of the World restaurant on the 106th floor of the Strat. Considering that, coupled with the fact that the view of my balcony is about the same height as the Space Needle, and you can imagine that I’m pretty desensitized to heights.

With that being said, it was still a nice view, and I think anyone who doesn’t already live the high-rise life would definitely appreciate it.

These are photos of Seattle from the observation deck, going counter-clockwise.

I still haven’t managed to figure out which mountain is which, and every time I ask, I usually get the answer of “I think that’s Mt. St. Helens, but I’m not sure” … so here is a picture of downtown Seattle with a mountain in the background, and I think that’s Mt. St. Helens, but I’m not sure.

And here’s Monica. I’m definitely sure that this is Monica.

I tasked Monica (Tempo‘s mobile esports manager) to build us a fun itinerary for our stay in Seattle, so she got us some city tourism passes that lets us see a handful of different attractions for a discounted price. Our first stop was the Seattle Aquarium.

I had my first aquarium visit over three years ago at the Shark Reef Aquarium at the Mandalay Bay in Las Vegas (this was back when I still lived in Southern California). Then about a year ago, I went with Monica and one of my former co-workers to the Henry Doorly Zoo and Aquarium in Omaha, NE. Today, Monica joined me again for my third aquarium visit.

This aquarium was an interesting hybrid of a multi-building indoor/outdoor aquarium. I don’t recall the Shark Reef Aquarium too well, and the aquar­ium in Omaha was mixed in with a zoo, so I’d say that this aquarium in Seattle was the most memorable aquarium experience I had. I have a lot more photos from the visit, but as you’d imagine, it was pretty dim inside the aquar­ium, so not too many of my photos came out nice and crisp.

Out of the three attractions we visited today, I’d say that this one was my favorite one.