Look at the Monkeys

My last 2 days in Seattle. I am sitting here now waiting for the bus to arrive so I can leave for the airport where I can fly back to Jacksonville all night long. But I am ready to go home. The fact that it was cold, windy, and rainy all day is part of it, but I am fulfilled with my vacation and ready to go back, especially since today is the first official day of my spring break

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Sunday I took a ferry over to Bremerton where the main attraction was the USS Turner Joy naval ship which I walked around on for a few hours. It was quite enjoyable and it is pretty amazing to be on that boat and see how much engineering goes into a ship of that size, it looks like it must take hundreds of people to keep the thing running. Unfortunately there really wasn’t much else to do there because it is just a small little town.

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I did find a little mom and pop Italian restaurant where I had the best calzone ever. Back in the city I saw another movie, Black Snake Moan, which I would not really recommend seeing. Today, my last day, as I said, it rained all day. Luckily it wasn’t really raining do bad you couldn’t walk in it. I checked out and went to the zoo, which was pretty good, other than the fact it was raining the whole time. I got back, saw some more protesting (2 days in a row), and went and checked out some glassblowing places. Then I had the biggest bowl of ramen I have ever had. It was about the size of my head. I could not finish the whole thing!

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Now I am just getting ready to head on to the airport where I will sit for a few hours, fly all night, sleep in another airport for about 3 hours, and get back to Jacksonville around 11am. Then I will go to work a few hours after that. Fun! I hope you enjoyed the pics. Like last time I have just added to the main Seattle album, so more pictures for you. ~Kyle

Who would have thought, rain in Seattle. I guess I lucked out because it was suppose to rain on Friday, and it ended up being a beautiful day all day. I finished up my stuff that I had to do at the conference, then I went out on the town. I started out by geocaching which took me to some cool locations.

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I also checked out Pikes Place Market and saw all the fresh fish and food. It smelt really good although I did not buy anything. I must have walked 10 miles that day all around that city. The thing that is cool about caching is that it takes you to areas that you would have never found just walking around. I cached all day before coming back and resting. Yesterday rained all day, which hindered my plans of taking a ferry across the water.

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I ended up going to the Seattle Aquarium, which unfortunately was not very exciting. I also checked out the Science Fiction Museum which was really good seeing how I am a huge nerd. Then I spent the rest of the night at an Irish pub. Now I am off to catch the ferry. I added to the last photo album, so if you already looked, look again for more pictures.

So here I am, Seattle, WA. My trip started at 4:15am Wednesday when I woke up to catch my 6am flight. I timed everything perfectly and got to the airport at 5:15, 45 minutes before my flight left. I wasn’t planning on the airport being so busy at 5 in the morning! I would have missed by flight if it was not for the Delta people letting all of us skip to the front of the line because we would have missed our flight. Also, of course, I get security flagged so it takes me extra long to get searched a few times. But all is good because I made my flight with maybe 5 minutes before the plan lifted up.

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About 8 hours later I find myself in Seattle, glad I bought a decent jacket before I left. The weather has actually been great. The temperature has been around the fifties, which is cold for me, but walking around a bit warms you up enough. Even at night it is not too cold to walk back to the hotel. I have walked around quite a bit and have yet to take a taxi anywhere. My hotel is only about half a mile from the conference, so it is only like a 5-10 minute walk. Everything in the city is pretty walkable.

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I have walked all around the city the last 2 days and have yet to have any problems. Yesterday I went ahead and did the space needle, which was nice, but over rated. The nicest thing in the Seattle skyline is the needle, so by being on top of it there is not much else to see. I have also done some geocaching so far. I have found about 8 so far and there are a few more I plan on getting while I am here. Yesterday I also met up with a friend from high school who just happens to be here by chance the same time as me, so that was cool. Today I attended a few lectures at the conference and prepared for my presentation tomorrow morning. After my presentation I will more than likely have lunch with some professors and then try to go to the art museum. There are still a bunch of things I would like to do while I am here, so let is hope I will have time to do them all. Tonight while I was walking home I thought I might catch a quick movie and then maybe find a bar or something after to relax.

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I find an AMC and pick the movie “Zodiac” because it seemed interesting enough, seeing as how I had never heard of it. The film started at 8pm and it was not 11pm till the movie ended. I just so happened to pick the longest movie I had seen in years. The movie was not bad at all, it just didn’t need to be almost 3 hours long. Either way I made it back and I am just about ready to sleep, especially since my body is still getting used to the 3 hour difference, and that is not even counting the other hour we lost last week to daylight savings time. So for now I will sleep and you can check out some of the wonderful pictures I have taken so far ~Kyle

So it is less than 2 weeks that I leave for Seattle, WA for the ACJS Criminal Justice conference! I leave on Wednesday, March 14th and will be there for 6 days and 5 nights! I actually present on Friday, with the conference taking up most of that day, but the real question is what to do to with all the free time? First, Seattle is the home of Geocaching, so I know I will be getting my cache on while there. There is also Pikes Place Market, art museum, aquarium, the space needle, and a few little places I plan on going to. But if anyone knows of places I must go, please let me know! Also, I am not too sure about the weather. I can only assume it is going to be a little colder than in sunny Florida. I might just wait till I get there to buy a coat, we will see. Other than that all is ok. The main thing right now is that I am waiting to hear back from the government to see if they have finished my background check to see if I can get the internship I want. But we will see about that. Seattle, here I come