Dear Liza,
When we were finally able to pull ourselves away from the Seattle Library, we walked along Fifth Street until we found the Monorail station on the 4th floor of the Nordstrom department store.
The Monorail, as the name implies, is a train with only one rail. It was built for the 1962 World’s Fair to carry visitors from downtown to the Fairgrounds, and still runs today.
The centerpiece of the World’s Fair was the 600 feet tall Space Needle which represented America’s fascination with space travel. It is sleek and beautiful, with elevators that whisked us to the top in about 10 seconds. Our heads were spinning!
At the very top is an observation deck that goes all the way around, so you can see everything in the city. The thick glass walls lean out just a tiny bit, so your selfies get a view of the city below. It was dizzying.
On the lower level was a restaurant surrounded by a glass floor that rotates. The rotation is slow, just one time around every hour, but the glass floor was hard to get used to… it was so far down!
When we had our feet on the ground agin, we headed across the Seattle Center to the Chihuly Glass Museum. 78 year old Dale Chihuly has been a glass blower for many years, but he works differently than most glass artists.
He lost his left eye to a car crash when he was only 35 and has no depth perception, so he had to develop a team to work with him. He designs the works and teaches his team, then coaches them as they blow the glass and assemble the pieces.
For a while I didn’t like this method, thinking it was a “Here, go make this” sort of operation, but Mr. Chihuly leads every part of the process…he just can’t do it himself.
By the time we had seen his museum, I admired him very much, as well as enjoying the play of light, space, plants, and even the Space Needle.
Love,
Grandma Judy
Dear Liza 