Seattle’s Neighborhood Parks, Playgrounds and Ducks - 2
Seattle’s Neighborhood Parks, Playgrounds and Ducks
Seattle’s many parks guarantee a childhood’s worth of diversions in the Emerald City.
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Seattle’s many parks guarantee a childhood’s worth of diversions in the Emerald City.
My wife Kris is to thank for the interactive mountain forest at the Children’s Museum, Seattle. It is located in the huge Center House at Seattle Center, that big, several-square-block park that is located just north of Denny Way from downtown Seattle, in the Queen Anne neighborhood. Kris worked several weeks with other sculptors to carve the 30-foot mountain out of concrete, and inside are tunnels and exhibitions devoted to northwest geology and botany. It’s perfect for little kids, as are the food shops that ring the Center House, with pizza, hotdogs, and burgers (and Starbucks for you), and the big, open dance floor where they like to run around. Outside, on hot days, an enormous computerized fountain blasts water a hundred feet into the air, under which kids romp and play until they’re thoroughly soaked. Take it from me: parents who get too close to the fountain while retrieving their squealing kids get soaked, too.
Seattle Seahawks tickets at Qwest Field are tough to come by, but sports fans can nearly always get into Seattle Mariners games on short notice (except the game against the loathsome Yankees, which sells out well in advance every year). You can buy center field bleacher seats for as little as $7 each, and look for family four-packs on Wednesday nights that discount reserved seats, hotdogs and sodas. The Mariners' Safeco Field is on the southern edge of downtown, in the Pioneer Square neighborhood. Also, the Seattle Sonics may be playing their final NBA basketball season in KeyArena (the owners are threatening to move the team), and tickets will probably be plentiful this winter.
A fine tour of the city that your kids will also enjoy is provided by Ride the Ducks of Seattle (206-441-DUCK), which meets near the Space Needle (also at Seattle Center) and puts everyone on open-air vehicles that were formerly amphibious landing craft. They tool around town looking at attractions and then plop into Lake Union for a leisurely putter around the water. Kids love it because everyone is equipped with duck-bill noisemakers, and they’re encouraged to use them to honk at cars and passersby.
Quack, slide, swish: Sounds like a nice family day in Seattle to me.
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Comments
1 Comments on this article | read all commentsWould like to visit
by danielz on April 11, 2008
Would like t visit