The ferry trip was so nice. There were many views of the inlets of water and the pine forests that covered all the surrounding area. Approaching Seattle, we received a spectacular view of the downtown skyline, but Mt. Rainier was not visible because of the clouds.
Once in Seattle, we headed back to
the the city center. Today we visited
the Experience Music Project. The Experience Music Project is an interactive museum about music, particularly the music started in the Seattle area.
Paul Allen, one of the founders of
Microsoft, came up with the idea for the
museum, which would mainly a museum dedicated
to Jimi Hendrix. Paul Allen donated
millions of dollars to help create the building.
In addition, his idea for the building was
suppose to be the unbuildable building because
of the design and support structure. The
idea eventually was built into the Experience Music Project and the building also passed the San Fransico
earthquake safety testing. 
Once we entered the Experience Music Project, several guides directed us into a large room called the sky church. Inside the room was one of the largest televisions in the world, and the place where you receive your personal guide to the museum, MEG. MEG stands for Museum Experience Guide. The MEG is a portable computer that you wear over your shoulder on a strap. Connected to the MEG are headphones so that you can hear the guide and a palm size device that has a touch screen, and a laser pointer to lock onto the items.
Inside the museum part of the Experience Music Project are several
exhibits. In each exhibit are large
posters that have a guitar pic on them. Pointed
at the pic, the palm device will receive
the information about the items. Once the
MEG receives data, the screen will give detailed
explanation of the item. If you like the
particular item, you may bookmark the item.
This allows you to go home and go online
and find your favorite items by your ticket
stub on the Internet.The main exhibit, the Jimi Hendrix exhibit, was the original idea for the museum. Inside the exhibit, there were several memorabilia from Jimi Hendirx, such as the outfit he wore at the Newport Music Festival. All along were places that
you could hear narrations about Jimi Hendirx's
childhood, rise and fall of his stardom,
and his death in 1970.Another exhibit allowed groups of people to get on stage in front of a TV with a recorded audience. On stage, each person chose an instrument to play. We decided that our band name was going to be Reigning Cats And Dogs. On stage, I chose to play the drums and the keyboard. The programmer only programmed Wild Thing into all the instruments. So we had fun trying the instruments, and reading off the teleprompter that was telling us the words to Wild Thing.
We also went to another interactive exhibit. In this exhibit, we watched a movie about the two young band members that had to learn about the Funk. This exhibit
was a three-part exhibit that started with
a video about members of a band reuniting
to play again. The second part was in a room
that was surrounded by several TVs. In
the middle of the room was a huge shoe. It
was cool, and wildly colored. The shoe looked
like something that Austin Powers would wear,
except it was ten feet long and five feet
tall. In this room, the video continued with
us meeting the boys in the band. The movie
was predictable, but it was cool because
of the interactive part of the exhibit. The
third part was a ride. Once I enter the room,
I 
had to take a seat in a hard plastic chair.
Wow, were they uncomfortable. After all the
walking around the museum, I finally had
a chance to sit down and relax, but the chairs
were so hard. Oh well, I did not have long
to think about the chair. Right after I sat
down, the safety bars came down and locked
me in place. While that was happening, a
giant screen appeared in front. The seats
un-expectantly lurched forward, along with
the continuation of the movie. This part
of the exhibit was going to describe the
funk. It started with the band singing with
James Brown. It finished with the two
boys playing in a concert.
After this, we left, because it was late and the lines for each of the exhibits were getting extremely long, meaning at least an hour wait. Right, I was not going to wait that long. I said it was time to go and so we headed out, but not before getting a Jimi Hendrix Experience CD and our poster from the Reigning Cats And Dogs.
After the Experience Music Project, we headed to the original Starbucks, since Starbucks is my dad's favorite place. We drove to Pike's Market, this is a huge outdoor market surrounded by shops in downtown
Seattle. We walked around and visited
many different stores. Finally, we arrived
at the Original Starbucks coffeehouse. Of
course, my dad had to get some coffee and
I got something too. Outside of Starbucks
was a group of street singer. They
were good. We sat and listened as we
sipped our drinks.Afterwards we headed back to the campsite for dinner. Dinner was quick because we were very tired from our day. We had spent several hours at theExperience Music Project and it was late so we went to bed.