Well I woke up again pretty early (5am today) but unfortunately the hotel wifi wasn’t any better at that time either. I couldn’t be bother so I went back to sleep.
So out the door again just after 9am. Across the road to have breakfast again. It was starting to drizzle so I thought that an extra cup of morning coffee would be in order.
From here I wandered up towards the Space Needle to see where the bus departs from that I plan to catch to Vancouver on Tuesday. The bus leaves from the Best Western Executive Inn which is on 6th and Denny (only a few blocks away). As luck would have it I arrived just as the bus was pulling in, so now I know.
My next planned port of call for the day was to be to register for my conference at the Marriot Waterfall. I couldn’t do this until about 12 noon, so with a few hours on my hands to kill I headed just a few block north from the Best Western to the Seattle Centre.
The Seattle Centre is home to the Space Needle, which can can ride to the top of but I decided to give that a miss.
Instead I went to the Pacific Science Center. I can’t say that it is spectacular but there are some interesting exhibits.
Tucked away in a corner is this tree that been alive since about 1300AD before it was cut down in 1962. Each ring is basically a year in history. It gives some perspective to what we call history.
After this I still had some time to kill so I walked around the rest of the Seattle Centre.
I was now raining pretty steadily and I headed down the hill to the Waterfront Marriot to register.
The Marriot is just across the road from where the conference will at the Bell Street Pier and Conference Centre.
After registering my next stop was for the Boeing factory tour. I reached the pick up location with plenty of time to spare so I had a quick bite to eat and tested out my ANZ Travel Visa card in a local ATM. Amazingly, the money came out of the slot so I know that it works (well at least here in the US!).
Unfortunately, because there is a labour (or in US spelling labor) strike at the Boeing plant we would not be able to gain access to the assembly plant, however the tour would go ahead with some substitutions.
Six of us boarded the bus and when asked where we all came from everybody was from Australia! Man, you just can’t get away from these Aussies can you?
So the first tour substitution is the Future of Flight museum adjacent to the assembly plants you can see above. The actual plane assembly buildings (largest building in the world) are on the left and the buildings for painting the aircraft are on the right.
Here’s a shot from inside the museum. It is basically an overview of how the Boeing commercial planes are put together. Not exactly riveting stuff but still interesting.
You can go upstairs to an observation deck where again you can see the assembly plants as well as the planes that have been painted and waiting on final testing.
You get to watch a short video about Boeing and then jump on a buss that takes you on a tour of the field but also goes to the restoration centre.
In here are about a dozen or so full restored and in many cases still flying World War II vintage planes. They have all been bought by Paul Allen who co-founded Microsoft and brought to Seattle.
On a regular basis, weather permitting, they have ‘fly days’ where some of the planes are rolled out and take for a fly, so basically everything you see here is in fully working order.
We also managed to snag a volunteer guide who took us around al the exhibits and gave us detailed insight into each item present.
Here you have a Spitfire,
and Messerschmitt BF109E,
Fieseler Fi 156-C2 Storch,
Hawker Hurricane,
and a Messerschmitt 163B Comet.
All in all I though this was the highlight of the tour and luckily I have been to the Boeing factory before so I was happy that I received my money’s worth.
The ride back to Seattle was slow due to heavy traffic, it being a rainy Friday and all.
Once back in town I headed back down to the Convention Centre to attend a talk about IT security which was interesting. When that was complete I headed back to my hotel, through quite steady rain now, grabbing a quick bite to eat at Subway.
So tomorrow is the first day of the conference and I need to get up early to be down there by seven. I’m going to be real interested in what this conference is really like. Time, and hopefully my update tomorrow will tell.
