My favorite photo of the trip: Pops at Chihuly Garden and Glass.

"Welcome to SEA-TAC International Airport..."

Palihotel

We booked a room at the 'Palihotel' in downtown Seattle. We chose it because it gave off every Wes Anderson vibe we could have asked for AND it's within eyesight of the Public Market. Plus, our room even had a view of the water and ferris wheel. Definitely a cute boutique hotel to check out if you're visiting the area.

The Public Market

If you took Detroit's Eastern Market, added an ocean and a few more blocks of businesses, you'd basically have Seattle's Public Market. It's well known for the fish stands "throwing fish" that are fresh caught and kept on ice until purchased by the public. There are also flower vendors, restaurants, craft breweries and views of the water all within walking distance of the main strip of the market. Also..there's the gum wall. It was gross and shocking but that made it cool.

Chihuly Garden and Glass

Before our trip to Seattle, we found out about Chihuly Garden and Glass from the Netflix show, Blown Away (a competition series about glass blowing that I def recommend). We were so excited to see the glass art made by Chihuly while we were on our trip. The pictures don't do it justice. These larger than life works of art are astounding. And my favorite photo from the entire trip is one I took of my Pops looking at a red glass art installation.

Whale Watching

I'm going to make a long story short here and just tell you that orcas are my favorite animal. Like, ever. It started when I was a kid and my grandma "adopted" an orca for me. It turns out, the orca was from a pod that lives primarily off the coast of Seattle. It also turns out that I would become obsessed with orcas and their conservation. At one point I even wanted to become a marine biologist (although I do think that other millennials can attest to this being sold to us as one of the most common careers paths we would encounter in life). Each year, I still try to donate to this same nonprofit foundation that "adopts" out orcas and helps protect their welfare. If you want the long version of this story, I would be more than happy to tell you.

Obviously, it's been on my bucket list to go and actually see where these orcas live. However, I know that boat traffic is one of the biggest problems these Southern Resident orcas face (because they only eat salmon and they have to use echolocation to find them...boats disturb that ability) so I wasn't totally sure I wanted to go on a boat tour. However, we found a guide that uses a propeller-less boat so I felt a lot better about it.

While on the tour, we were actually about to see a pod of 4 transient orcas and stayed with them for about 30 minutes. We also saw a gray whale, harbor seals and sea lions, too! It was seriously an amazing experience and I have to say that my husband was a trooper putting up with me during the orca viewing because I was seriously freaking out.