Reached Seattle from Long Beach on Friday night. Stayed at Holiday Inn near airport.

Saturday was exploring Seattle. We visited the Future of Flight Boeing plant in Everett. It was awesome sight to see the new 747-8 being built along with 787 dreamliners. The narration on the tour was great too. Then after having a great Indian buffet for lunch, we headed to Seattle Center and enjoyed the amphibian vehicle ride called "Ride the Duck of Seattle". This is an awesome ride for all ages. For one hour, the ride takes you around Seattle downtown showing you various landmarks of the city along with various docks and Pike Place Market cheering and quacking all the way thru. The best part is next 30 minutes when the duck actually enters the lake using the boat ramp and cruises the lake like a boat. Next up was the use of monorail to visit Pike Place Market and visit the first ever Starbucks Coffee store located there. While sipping on the cappuccino, we visited the market, which was closing down for the day. After walking around the area for about an hour, we headed back to Seattle Center aboard the monorail. It was time to visit the Space Needle. A perfect sunny day had provided us everything so far and it did not disappoint us on top of the tower either. Perfect views of the skyline and the Mt. Rainier in the background was worth the visit up there. After having Indian style pizza, we called it quits and returned to hotel around mid-night.

Sunday morning, we reached the pier around 11:00am in four minivan cabs from hotel. With our enormous luggage, the porter went straight in and we also bypassed the luggage check-in lines and we were at the counter to collect our key cards. It was over with in a flash and we found ourselves on the ship around 11:45am and went straight to Summer Palace restaurant to have lunch. After that we walked around the public areas and explored the ship, signed up the kids at kids club and waited for the call for our staterooms to be ready. We were in the room around 2:30pm and soon we headed to Stardust Theater for the drill. It was a quick five minutes drill and we headed to aft section of deck 12 to enjoy the sail away. The ship always left 10-15 minutes early from each port somehow. We had a great view of Seattle skyline, Space Needle and Mt. Rainier for a while and then we were at sea breathing fresh and crisp air. We all had our turn at rock climbing wall this evening and then had a drink at the atrium bar. Our luggage was delivered meanwhile and we unpacked most of the things. We had booked the dinner at Indigo Dining room and had a lot of fun, though I prefer Summer Palace more. After walking around a bit outside on deck 7, we called it a day and went to the room, stowed the suitcases away and went to bed. Read more