When I went to Seattle, I saw the Chihuly Glass Gardens. Inside the building, there was tons of beautiful glasswork. The effect was striking; lights and glass combined in amazing ways. The scenes were spectacular! We also got to see a glass demonstration of a purple bowl being made. We got to the gardens on a monorail, and came back the same way. The Chihuly Glass Gardens are filled with beautiful works of art made by Dale Chihuly, as shown in my photos below (keep in mind there are a lot of them because the gardens were so spectacular that I just kept taking pictures).

Inside the Exhibit:

A Boatload of Glass (Literally):

Inside the Exhibit:

Mom-o-ette (aka a silhouette of my mom):

Beautifully Built Bowls:

In the Garden – A Great Place to Reflect (literally… check out my pictures and see if you can spot the reflections of me and the Space Needle):

In the Glass Greenhouse:

Did you know that I went on a 1 night cruise for my 10th birthday last month? The ship’s name was the Ruby Princess. We traveled from Vancouver to Seattle. The Ruby Princess was more like a huge floating deluxe hotel than a boat. It had a glass elevator, a beautiful plaza, a theater, 3 pools, 4 jacuzzis, and at least 10 restaurants (including a buffet, three dining rooms, a pizza and ice cream bar, and the Trident Grill, a grill with absolutely amazing burgers and fresh french fries).

When we were in port in Vancouver, two absolutely enormous bald eagles soared over the water and flew towards the front of the ship’s deck before vanishing into the mountains.

On the ship, we met Wayne (a super nice Security Officer from England who was part of the crew). We hung out with Wayne on a hidden front deck above the captain’s bridge that was accessed through a door that you would think was the door to a stateroom.  We hung out with Wayne when we were leaving port and cruising under the Lions Gate Bridge and through the channel towards Seattle.

Oh yeah, I almost forgot, that when the boat was leaving port a flock of surf scoters was swimming in front of the Ruby and flying a few feet ahead and settling back in only to have the same thing happen when the boat would drive by again. Those birds just never seemed to learn that cruise ships keep passing through the channel. After all, they are birds.

Wayne taught me about the ISO feature on my camera and he told me about the sightings of whales that have been seen from this ship’s deck, including a beluga whale sighted in Alaska; speaking of whales, I had a whale of a time talking to him. After that, I got really hungry and we went to one of the dining rooms for dinner. After dinner we went to try to find Wayne again on the front deck of the ship, but when we went up we met someone else. They were about to close off the area, but they let us stay with them a little longer because we were very interested in the current in front of the boat. I thought that I would feel something as we passed through the strong current, but surprise, surprise, I didn’t feel anything. I guess the boat was too big.

At sunset, we went to the back deck of the boat and I took totally amazing photos of the sunset (as shown below).

That is what I call the world’s best birthday!

P.S. Sorry that I have not blogged to you in a while. I was really busy gathering materials for my blog. So stay tuned.