Seattle!

Mars Hill Church - Bellevue Campus

Church was amazing but what happily surprised me was that it was barely five metres from a Barnes and Noble bookstore and Starbucks!! Thats a Melody version of heaven on earth right there - Church, books and coffee :D America has convinced me to just not buy books in Canada or anywhere else for that matter unless theyre cheap and second hand. At Barnes and Noble I found extremely high quality books and titles that Ive not seen anywhere for very decent prices. I was very tempted to buy a hard copy large book of Aesop's Fables in colour that was on sale for $20 but I refrained as I knew we'd be back one day with more money. I was also amazed to find an entire shelf of Christian books that wasn't spiritual rubbish by Joel Osteen or whatshername I can't remember, the one with the southern accent who annoys me a lot... lol

Thats Mars Hill Church on the right hand side and the Barnes & Noble + Starbucks on the left hand side (photo was taken prior to the building being owned by the church)

Pastor Mark Driscoll is the preaching Pastor at Mars Hill Church. For more info on the multiple church campuses, pastors, sermon podcasts and vision/doctrine of the church click here

After church we made our way across Lake Washington with its spectacular views over to downtown Seattle.

Heres a gorgeous picture of Lake Washington with Mercer Island in the middle facing Seattle from Bellevue

One thing I have to note about Seattle is just how stunningly gorgeous it is! It helped a whole lot that the weather was fantastic as its very typical of both Seattle and Vancouver to get a huge ton of rain throughout the year. I love the lakes. I also appreciated how good their highways in and outside of the city were. Maybe Im getting used to the horrible never ending roadworks of the #1 highway in Vancouver but Washington/Seattle highways were clean, big, even and decent. Yes we had very heavy traffic in downtown but what do you expect? Its downtown!! Those poor buggers hardly see the sun like us and it was a sunny Sunday and hey lets all go clog up downtown! No big deal.
The other thing which I knew would happen and didn't at all surprise me was the high cost of downtown parking. We were very lucky that we found parking on Pike St for lunch was was incrediably busy and just a tad dodgy/colourful by the looks of the neighborhood but again so what? We knew we would run into that and came prepared for it. 

Science Fiction Museum of Seattle!! (SFM)

You'd think it was some kind of art gallery when you see it cos it makes you think some giant vomited up metal and colour and called it a building lol. I gotta admit the different shades of the copper walls and stuff was very pretty. Ive got no photo but on the other side of the building the walls are like purpley metal and made the nice courtyard look like it had waves on the ground it was pretty cool. One thing about SFM is that I don't think its entire acurate to just call it a science fiction museum. Its more of a pop culture museum than anything else. It was broken down into exhibitions that were show casing popular science fiction, fantasy, horror, and music. In particular they had a kind of memory shrine going for  Jimi Hendrix and Nirvana/Kurt Cobain as well as a thing for female rock artists that I found interesting to look at/listen to but couldn't take pictures because my camera and phone camera died..

Atrium of the museum

I loved this big giant sculpture of guitars! On closer look there was a thing to read with headphones so I put them on and what the curator or whoever they were did was attached timers and electronic picks to the different strings on the different guitars so that it made music in a way. Very cool...

Science Fiction Exhibition

Christopher Reeves Superman outfit

Yoda's necklace and walking stick (Starwars)

(William Shatner) Captain Kirk's chair with tribbles (which breed faster than rabbits Ive heard)

Full length jacket worn by Neo/Keanu Reeves (The Matrix Trilogy)

The info on the wall says the design was inspired by a combining a Mao suit with a clerical cassock outfit

Heres a better picture (bottom right) of what I saw (minus good looking Keanu Reeves lol)

Also on the left is a model of the robot spider things in the Matrix that travel through all the tunnels within earth searching for things to destroy namely hovercraft ships run by rebels like Morpheus

On the right is the Star Trek uniform word by Nichelle Nichols who played Uhura in the First Generation series and on the left is the uniform worn by Brent Spiner who played Data the android in the Second Generation series (I hope I got that right..)

Sci Fi Weapons

Rifle used in 'Men in Black'      -------->

One of those Anubis Masks that those baddies wear in Stargate

Dr Who Stuff

 Fantasy Exhibition

I'll admit, besides the costumes, I didn't pay a hell of a lot of attention to this exhibition because it had some stuff I couldn't care less about. Namely there was a room filled with nothing but stuff from 'Magic the gathering' and World of Warcraft' which personally I think is a load of crap by hey thats just my opinion. Typically the people I meet who are into that stuff hate their lives and want instead to become children in adults bodies who only care about make believe wars and card trading. That said everyone one who knows me knows that Im only into one fantasy series and one sci fi series (Tolkien & Star Wars) and that Id rather attend a Jane Austen convention with my grandmother than get excited over this stuff that my husband and Mums family care more about than me. THAT said, there was some interesting things to look at in the fantasy collection...

 

Xena Warrior Princess outfit worn by New Zealand actress Lucy Lawless

Nice suit of armor there...

Left, costume of the Wicked Witch's Guard. Looks like a combination of Swiss Army, Buckingham Palace Guard and Russian Cossack outfits...

Right, the cowardly lion costume and actors face in it..

 Princess Bride!

Wowsa, look at these outfits!!!

 "Hello, my name is Inigo Montoya - you killed my father, prepare to die"

 Wesley and Inigo's swords

Narnia

Susan Pevensie and her bow and arrows

Costume head of a Minotaur used in the Narnia series

The White Witch and her wand and crown

Labyrinth - David Bowie the Goblin King

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Id also like to add that I saw some particularly fantastic manuscripts, diaries and sketch drawings done personally by JRR Tolkien. It was amazing to read and look at esp his hand writing! Only problem was the Tolkien stuff was guarded by two staff who said cameras were not allowed because the flashes would gradually ruin the paper or writing etc... Ahh well. It was fantastic to look at anyway.. One thing I read in the diary was that Tolkien got the idea for the word 'Hobbit' by inspiration from CS Lewis who had a similar story with a brave midget character called a 'Babbit'. Tolkien stole from Lewis! Then he had the bloody nerve to disassociate himself from him for using different mythological characters in one series! Geez he was a bit of perfectionistic snob wasn't he.. Brilliant genius though..

 The Horror Exhibition

Unfortunately I couldn't get enough pictures except for this funny one of my husband Steven with the screamo portraits hahaha. Theres was a photo booth in this section where you had to scream as realistically as possible with the help of scary visual aids and I suppose the best ones get on the wall. 

I liked this wall montage of scary horror characters frequently used in novels and movies. They had very useful info under each picture on what their traits were and what to do if you see or have to fight one lol. 

100 Horror movies you have to see before you die..

More stuff from horror movies Im unfamiliar with.. I see a frankenstein head and an axe that was used in a movie called 'The Shining' and a skeletal bug thing that looks like it has a long finger and testicles.. ??

• And lastly there was an exhibition (shrine more like!) on Nirvana/Kurt Cobain and the Seattle punk scene here

• And an exhibition on on the musical and fashion influence of Jimi Hendrix here

Hope you enjoyed and persevered through this very long post of mine. Sayonara til next time!