Today’s blog post actually happened at the end of our trip after visiting the National Parks, but for the sake of simplicity and continuity, we will post this one as the 3rd day in Seattle.

On our last full day in Seattle, we scratched off some additional areas we wanted to explore. First, we went to Gas Works park which was surprisingly not crowded given it was a Saturday on a long weekend with ideal weather.

This park has a 19.1-acre public park on the site of the former Seattle Gas Light Company gasification plant, located on the north shore of Lake Union.

Ariela was absolutely thrilled they had a playground and it was a particularly enjoyable park for us as the views were incredible.

Someone was tired!! traveling with Eitan is NOT relaxing!

Ariela also managed to find an area that felt like a stage and put on a show for everyone walking by.

We then explored the winery area of Seattle called Woodinville which is just about 20 minutes outside the city. This area is considered the wine area, but there is a caveat… They don’t actually grow the grapes. Some of the wineries do make their wine onsite, but seemed that the vast majority were just tasting rooms.

We ate at one and they nicely gave us free champagne for our anniversary.

The wine and food were both quite good! Ariela especially enjoyed her pasta.

We then went to the more touristy winery that is a big castle and has a lawn where people can just sit and enjoy wine.

When we were there a lot of people were gathered as a concert was going to start shortly.

Eitan and I shared a flight of wine which was pretty good.

But Eitan can only allow relaxing wine tasting for so long as there were more sites to see, so we headed to the Ballard Locks fish ladders.

This ladder has 21 steps, or weirs, which allow the fish to swim upstream on a gradual incline.

There is a really nice wave sculpture right outside.

We had gone through this area earlier in the week while on the boat, but now we got to walk it and actually see the salmon going upstream. Ariela was not having it.

We also got to watch a fancy boat utilize the lock system, it is very impressive engineering. Look at the clearance on this boat! barely a few inches.

We also got to see a seal enjoy dining on these salmon.

We then debated what to do next. On our way back to the hotel area, we drove through an area called Belltown and it looked fun, so we decided to eat dinner there. Parking was a nightmare but we finally found a spot without paying $40 bucks for 2 hours.

We found a great Sonics mural!! so nostalgic for Eitan as he was a huuuuge fan.

We had some delicious Thai Food as we finally found a Thai with “Good” rating instead of an “Okay”. Somehow our less packed day still got us back to the hotel after 9pm. Ariela is truly a trooper surviving traveling with us.

The next morning we only had 2 hours to kill before heading to lunch with our friends who recently moved to Seattle from Orange County. We had a relaxing morning in the hotel (finally!), but of course, Eitan made the executive decision to go to the Flight Museum.

2 hours for a flight museum? This is the worst nightmare for Eitan and you could see his anxiety run through his veins as the line was forming to get tickets.

Soon we realized that it would have been impossible to see the museum fast enough with Ariela, so Eitan took off at record speed enjoying the displays while Sarah took care of Arielita by taking her to the very nice and interactive kid’s exhibits.

The museum was SPECTACULAR and Eitan hopes that he will be back one day and spend hours there again. It was barely enough time to walk around the museum while barely reading anything.

They have the only surviving D-21 drone mounted on an SR-71 Blackbird!

They have amazing displays like the Concorde, which on its retirement flight to The Museum of Flight on November 5, 2003, it set a New York City-to-Seattle speed record of 3 hours, 55 minutes, and 2 seconds. Much of the flight was over northern Canada, where it flew supersonic for 1 hour, 34 minutes, and 4 seconds.

They let you in! It is bigger than I expected.

Nixon’s Air Force One

They also have the first Boeing 747, a huge display of WW1 and WW2 planes, and several other incredible exhibits.

Some of the most interesting exhibits were the space related ones. They have a great collection of artifacts from the USSR space program, something I haven’t really seen before, like a Soyuz descent capsule and Russian space suit.

They have a moon rock!

And a Saturn 5 engine. They also have a section explaining how they recovered several rocket components from the bottom of the sea. A team organized by Jeff Bezos spent three weeks fishing at sea to recover the corroded F-1 engines, which sat more than 4 kilometers below the surface of the Atlantic Ocean. What they recovered is being shown in this museum.

We finally met again at the Kidport before heading out for lunch. But not before buying my airplane ticket at the booth.

After the museum, we went to meet our friends in one restaurant called “Ciudad”. They offer BBQ plates from around the world. It was delicious!!

After a nice 2 hour lunch, we headed to the Airport to return our car and fly home!! What an amazing trip!