Day 11......OTTERS OTTERS OTTERS OTTERS oh and Underground cities

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Today was, essentially, my last day in Seattle. I will still be here tomorrow, but Matt is going to be at work so I likely will be sitting here catching up on my TV shows. SO, we went to the Seattle Aquarium today and took a tour of the underground city! The aquarium flipping cool! The first thing they have when you walk in is a giant tank where you can touch star fish and those little tentacle thingies (yes that is their scientific name, trust me) (Warning: the cuteness of certain mammals make me deteriorate at points in this post)

The water was FREEZING! My hand went numb after a few seconds of poking a star fish! They also had this giant class circle with jelly fish swimming around it, and one side was lit with colored lights.

The jellies were pretty darn cool. A lot of the tanks were lit with UV light so we could see the glowing affects it had on the plants, some of which were spectacular to see.

Plus there was the awesome fish like this one...

This little fellow being like, "WWASSSUUUPPPPP"

And of course, the so ugly they are cute ones...

I watch this show on Animal Planet called River Monsters, and they had one show about sturgeon, and I find these fish that sometimes live in fresh water to be awesome and terrifying.

OKAY OKAY, NOW WE ARE TO THE CUTE AND CUDDLY PART OF THE TOUR! LOOK AT THIS PRECIOUS SEAL!

AND THIS ONE! SO FAT AND CUTE!

OTTERS OTTERS OTTERS OTTERS! I LOVE OTTERS! THEY ARE ONE OF MY FAVS!

LOOK AT THE MAJESTIC OTTER! SO FLUFFY! SO PLAYFUL! AAAHHHHH

Okay I am done. Seriously though, I love otters. There were river otters as well as the sea otters I just showed you, but they wouldn't sit still long enough for me to take a good picture of them. Honestly, I could have sat there all day watching the otters, but we had to move on.

Next we went to the underground tour where we went...underground. The surface of the city used to be a lot lower. But the idiots who planned the city had no idea what they were doing, so the tide was always washing up twice a day half way through the business district, making the streets clogged with mud and sewage. Luckily (and I can say luckily because no one died), there was a fire that burned the entire district to the ground, which allowed for the city to rebuild, and they rose the surface of the city and put in sea walls to solve the problem of the tides. What was left behind was remnants of the original city. (This is a very simplified version of what happened. If you are curious about more details Wikipedia is a nice option)

The above picture used to be the inside of store front windows looking out onto the street.

These were more windows of the same building, and on the far left was the front door.

This above photo was a butcher shop.

An ally way in Seattle as we skipped around from underground to underground.

This is a skylight that the city built into the new sidewalks so light would shine down into the underground passages. Why? Because people still used the underground tunnels to get around for a long time after the new city was builtQ!

The above picture was the entrance to the underground portion of a bank. There was a teller cage where people could bring their gold to be found, and behind it was the bank vault...which we walked through.

This is Matt leaving the vault.

This art was actually off an old building that had been torn down a few years ago, and the company that runs the underground tours saved it and stuck it at the end of the tour. Overall it was pretty darn cool, and fascinating that a thing like this existed and I had no idea about it! I guess every city and town has their stories, and unless you have lived there, you might never have known about it. I think this really highlights why it is important to travel. I have known about Seattle, heard things about it, but until I had been there for myself I had never heard this amazing bit of history that is unique to this city.

I am going to have a lot of time on my hands tomorrow, so I guess I will conclude my thoughts about the trip a little bit more there. Until then, rest well my friends!