Seattle Wednesday 2nd
Got up around 9ish had a lazy start getting some coffee and a cereal bar for breakfast. I decided to head to the Museum of Flight and so took an Uber from the hotel out there as it's a little way out down near the smaller airport.
It's built on the site of Boeing's Plant 1 and incorporates “The Red Barn” which was their factory from the 1900's and is now a museum to Boeing.
They had four different areas The William E. Boeing Red Barn had the history of Boeing it had some of the old machinery in the lower floors and mockup's of the very early Boeing wooden planes. Upstairs it showed the progression to metal and then Jet engined planes.
The J.Elroy McCaw Personal Courage Wing (or black box) a completely enclosed area with two floors lower floor focusing on WW2 the upper floor WW1. They had a spitfire and a Messerschmidt as well as several other types of ww2 planes. Upstairs they had an original Caproni Ca 20 an Italian designed fighter plane one of the earliest designed it was never produced as the Italian government wanted bombers instead. This prototype is still mostly original parts and covering which is rare for a plane of that vintage most of the ones you see are reproductions.
They had various Fokker's and Sopwith's and lots of biplanes and triplane.
After that I headed to the cafe to get a spot of lunch I bought a Blackbird (all the food was air themed) which was a roast beef sandwich. I ate outside in the view of the exterior planes then wandered over for a look.
The had a B29 currently wrapped totally in white plastic shrink wrap. A B17 that for an extra fee you could go inside. A Concord and a 787 dreamliner. You could go in the dreamliner it was number 3 made and served as a test plane. After that I went on the Airforce one that was used during the Kennedy era it was at first pretty normal plane hardware then it got progressively more plush as you headed up the plane.
I headed back into the museum and then over the bridge to the space section. There they had a full size Space shuttle trainer as well as several other space things including a Soyuz descent module and a Blue Origin's Charon prototype.
Then I headed to the final part of the museum the great gallery. The pride of place was an SR71 Blackbird which sat in the middle of the room. Around it were several UAV's including a model of a V1 the buzzbomb. They had one of the Apollo command modules that was used as testing (I don't think it flew) and a mockup of the Gemini spacecraft. They had a lot of other planes including one of the air cars. I wandered around and then went out front where they had a couple more planes including a Harrier and a f14 tomcat.
I took an Uber back to the hotel and was setting up to upload pictures when the housekeeping arrived to do the room. I went down to the lobby had an iced coffee and read my book for an hour or so then headed back.
I had a nap and then read a bit and around 8pm headed out for dinner. I decided to go to this sushi place on the corner near my hotel called the dragonfish. I had chicken pot stickers then their dragonfish roll and washed all that down with a couple of pints of Kirin Ichiban. It was a good meal the waitress discussed London pricing with me having been there I assured her it was expensive even for what could for some values be described a local. I watched baseball on the tv still as impenetrable as ever.
Tomorrow I have to change hotels (I couldn't get this place for all my stay) so that means lugging my gear around for more of the day than I'm happy with till check in time. It's just over to the Sheraton which I got on hotwire special but still it's going to make tomorrow less of a full day as a result I might see if I can leave my stuff there somehow.
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