After that I went to bed, trying to rest up for an early morning the next day, Tuesday, which was my last real day in the city.




On the road again, this time to Everett.




Everett is the home to Boeing's biggest manufacturing site, which includes the 'world's largest building by volume' as they like to call it (repeatedly). These are just some of the doors on the massive hangar space. (Note cars in foreground for scale.)

On the tour, you cannot bring cameras. Or cellphones or PDAs or other personal electronics. I thought at first this might be because of industrial espionage, but in fact they only show you the manufacturing area for the 747s, which they've been building for many years - what secrets could there be? At the beginning of the tour they explained the prohibition was caused by guests dropping items from the observation platform down onto the shop floor. Yet they don't bar women from bringing purses. Hmm...

And speaking of manufacturing 747s, there is nothing like seeing all the bits and pieces of an airplane coming together to make you realize those things start off as very small piece and are held together with nuts and bolts. I liked it better when I thought of passenger jets as one big piece.