Day 9: Seattle

---

Today was a pretty full on day. Annemike (sp?), a girl from my hostel and I went to the EMP (Experience Music Project). We had been speaking last night about heading out to the Boeing factory today. We managed to book a pickup at 12.30pm so we spent the morning an the EMP. It was realy great. They have a Nirvana exhibit, Jimi Hendrix exhibit, a history of guitars, Avatar exhibit and a Battlestar Galactica exhibit. It was all really good except the Battlestar Galactica one. I'm sure it was actually good, but since I know nothing about the show it meant nothing to me. The history of guitars was amazing, they had guitars dating back to the 1800's, and they had some of the original Les Paul's, SG's, Strat's and Tele's. They also had plenty of Kurt Cobain memorabilia, and alot of the audio guide was done by Krist Novoselic - the bassist of Nirvana.

After a 15 minute walk back in the driving rain we arrived at the hostel just in time to grab a bite to eat before pickup. It was about a 45 minute drive to the Boeing factory, which included the "Future of Flight" museum and the Boeing factory tour. The Future of Flight exhibition was interesting, but rather small. It included a full sized fuselage section of the new 787 "Dreamliner" as well as cross sections and models of different planes. There was also a cockpit which you could explore and mess around with the switches and levers.

Once we arrived at the tour, we were allowed no electronic equipment. This is because (apparently) one day a man dropped his camera onto a wing and cost the company $370,000. The tour was really interesting though. We got to see a Lufthansa 747 being assembled as well as a United Airlines 787 and another 777. All the technology and stats were really quite interesting too, but I wont bore you with that. However they went to a lot of effort to continuously tell us we were standing in the largest building (by volume) in the world.

For dinner Annemike and I went to the market and bought some meat and salads and just cooked at the hostel. It's nice to be able to make your own meals every now and then. Afer dinner entertainment was watching The Dark Night in the theatre room.

Not sure what's on tha cards tomorrow. I hope to be able to get into a Starbucks that is 40 floors up the Columbia Tower. Apparently it has better views than the Space Needle and it is free (if you buy a coffee). I atually managed to find the very first Starbucks, but it is closed for renovations, so I figured that this Starbucks is the next best thing. Maybe I'll try some of Seattle's famous seafood too, but we will see how I feel.

---