Day trip to Tacoma, Washington

Me and a colleague from work had been planning to trip to Tacoma all summer and finally the weather was nice enough for us to go which was not a working weekend for me. Tacoma is 32 miles southwest of Seattle and two of the attractions that we decided to visit were the Museum of Glass, and Point Defiance Zoo & Aquarium. Truthfully, the Museum of Glass did not have many things to see inside, but it did provide you the opportunity to see live glass-making in the Hot Shop Amphitheater. As you can guess, the artists were very good and it was interesting to see the whole process from start to finish. What I liked the most was actually outside of the museum. The thing that strikes you the most when you arrive at the museum is the 90 foot cone which houses the Hot Shop. This cone has become the landmark that symbolizes the museum. The other attraction outside the museum is the Chihuly Bridge of Glass, which is a 500 foot log pedestrian overpass that links the museum to the rest of downtown Tacoma. The bridge itself houses a collection of glass work from Dale Chihuly in the form of the "Seaform Pavilion" (a ceiling made of 2,364 objects from Chihuly's Seaform and Persian series), "Crystal Towers" (the towers rise forty feet above the bridge deck and serve as beacons of light for the bridge and city) and the "Venetian Wall" (an eighty-foot wall displaying 109 Chihuly sculptures). We spend some time at the bridge as the glasswork there was just amazing.

The artists at work

The cone

Fellow tourists under the "Seaform Pavilion"

One of the "Crystal Towers"

The "Courthouse" reflecting off the "Venetian Wall"

A light rail train on Union Station (you see, I told you that there is a Union Station at every US city)

After a spot of sightseeing in downtown Tacoma, we headed over to the Point Defiance Zoo & Aquarium. I had already been to the Woodland Park Zoo and the Seattle Aquarium so I was not expecting anything different from those. Inside, we realized that it was not that big but we still wanted to be selective to what we would see. After a quick trip to see the muskoks, reindeers and polar bears, we spend the rest of the trip in the aquariums mostly looking at the walruses (they are massive), puffins (I notice that all they do is clean themselves), penguins (they are cuter when they are swimming), sea otters (they were so playful with each other) and the beluga whales (swimming in circles). To wrap up the trip, we were fortunate to see the feeding time for the walruses and the beluga whales. Both were entertaining as they were performing tricks for the crowds and provided lots of photo opportunities to trigger happy amateur photographers like myself :-)

Which one of you is Rudolph?

The penguins

Playful sea otters

Shocking! a puffin which is not cleaning itself

Walruses (swimming, waving and close up)

Beluga whales (swimming and waiting for dinner and health checkup)

In the Aquarium