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Tags: Best-Factory-Tours-Map / Best Factory Tours / Boeing / Washington Travel / Airplanes / → All Tags

Tour The Boeing Factory And Enter The Largest Building In The World

Become an informed consumer while still on vacation! Check out Jaunted's newest series of the best factory tours the world over.

We'll admit, today's featured factory tour may be more of our dream than yours. After all, you can ride in airplanes constantly without needing to know where they, so to speak, come from; it's that old saw about watching the sausage get made. But we've always wanted to go to the Future of Flight, and we envy the lucky travel writers who have already been to Boeing's pricey but exciting factory tour.

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Tags: Beer Travel / Beer Festivals / Festivals / Events / Drinking Travel / Seattle Travel / → All Tags

A Pumpkin Beer Festival In Seattle To Start The Halloween Season

Pumpkin season is upon us. Most places are now filled with orange displays, the convenience store is pushing their pumpkin cappuccino things, and of course there’s plenty of candy. We’re all about celebrating Halloween even if it is still an entire month until the big day, especially if it involves some special holiday beverages. One brewery in Seattle knows that there’s only one way to truly get the season underway, and that is with a pumpkin beer festival.

The Elysian Brewing Company is putting the final preparations in place for The Great Pumpkin Beer Festival. Things will be taking place this weekend, October 10 and 11, at the brewery’s Capitol Hill location. There will be plenty of pumpkin beers to help lager lovers get their fix and celebrate the season. The brewery will be honoring nine of their own beers, including The Great Pumpkin Imperial Pumpkin Ale, Hansel and Gretel Ginger Pumpkin Pilsner, and Night Owl. There will be concoctions from other breweries as well including Southern Tier, Rock Bottom, and Dogfish Head.

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Tags: Movie Set Travel / Seattle Travel / Jennifer Aniston / → All Tags

Love Happens in Seattle, If You Believe Jennifer Aniston

Get out your tissues ladies. Love Happens, a new romantic dramedy starring Jennifer Aniston and Aaron Eckhart, opens in theaters today. The movie isn't getting the best reviews from critics but we give its setting, Seattle, four stars.

Where to Stay:
In the beginning of the movie, Aaron Eckhart walks from Pike Place to the Hyatt Regency, in the rain of course. But the Hyatt in the movie is actually in Vancouver, where most of the movie was made. Seattle does have their own Hyatt though, the Grand Hyatt, located downtown at 721 Pine St. Keeping with the Love Happens theme, the Grand Hyatt Seattle offers an Amour Package that includes accommodations, in-room breakfast for two, champagne, chocolates, bath salts and a 3 pm check out. And just like in life, all of that love comes at a price, the package starts around $385 a night.

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Tags: Beer Travel / Beer Festivals / Festivals / Washington Travel / Events / → All Tags

Oktoberfest In The US Means Electing A 'Miss Buxom'

We thought we did a pretty good job rounding up the 5 Things You Have To Know For 2009's Fest during our 2008 Oktoberfest post-mortem, but apparently we left out the annual Fremont Oktoberfest festival up in Washington. The three day beer-soaked event, which includes over 70 brews on tap and bills itself as being "for kids and adults of all ages," includes a cigar lounge, copious amounts of alcohol, and an appropriately-named "Miss Buxom" Contest.

The festival kicks off on September 18 and goes until the 20th, with Miss Buxom being choosen at 7pm on the first night. They say you don't need to be female to enter, though we're guessing it kind of helps since the winner is chosen by audience applause. You must be wearing "traditional German attire with a Fremont twist" even to enter, which we're taking to be a euphemism for "cleavage."

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Tags: Labor Day Travel / Festivals / Summer Festivals / Events / Seattle Travel / → All Tags

Seattle Has An Everything Under The Umbrella Festival For Labor Day

If hot air balloons and chuck wagons aren’t in your plans for Labor Day, there’s still plenty of other ideas for you to waste away your holiday weekend.

One of the best festivals of the year is Bumbershoot 2009, and it’s conveniently taking place at Seattle Center from September 5-7. Film, theatre, arts, and of course music, will all be yours to enjoy. So grab a triple venti something or other and hit the festival running.

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Tags: Strange Scuba Spots / Scuba / Scuba Dives / Active Travel / Seattle Travel / → All Tags

The One Seattle Place Where Starbucks Doesn't Rule: Underwater

Water—especially rain—is one of the first things that comes to mind when you think of Seattle. Despite all this water, underwater activiies are not exactly as synonymous with Seattle. That’s slowly changing thanks to a local Scuba club and their shore dive adventures into Puget Sound.

The Scuba Schools Group has a location in Seattle, and they’d be happy to have you join them in one of their club dives. Don’t worry though, there’s no secret handshake or membership dues at this club, just a bunch of people enjoying the underwater universe. Best of all, the club dives are free, so just bring your gear and get going. Just make sure you have some experience doing cold water dives, because even though its summer, the water is a little chilly.

On August 29, the dive crew will be hitting up the Alki Junkpile. It’s kind of an artificial reef, Seattle-style, where they’ve seen some “cute” grunt sculpin on recent dives. If you can’t make it to that dive, there’s also one planned off the Keystone Jetty on September 27. You’ll be burning through your digital camera battery as you snap off pictures of rockfish and other critters. There’ll be a cookout after the dive, so be a pal and bring something to throw on the grill.

Related Stories:
· Seattle Scuba Shore Diving [Official Site]
· Say Mazel Tov To Underwater Weddings [Jaunted]
· Scuba coverage [Jaunted]

[Photo: Dan Hershman]

Tags: Summer Festivals / Kites / Washington Travel / → All Tags

Get Some Air At Washington State Kite Festival

Here's a breezy summer getaway: The Washington State International Kite Festival may leave you with a crick in your neck from all that looking up, but these high flyers are worth it.

Held in the southwestern town of Long Beach, WA near the Oregon border, the festival transforms the skies in the third week in August every year. Different types of kites compete each day for ribbons and demonstrate techniques like kite fighting, but you don't just have to watch: August 17, opening day, also features a workshop on making your own kites, and Wednesday the 19th offers the same class especially for kids.

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Tags: Tubing / Best Tubing Spots / Water Sports / Active Travel / Seattle Travel / → All Tags

Seattle's Terrain Is Good For At Least One Thing: Rivers For Tubing

High temperatures in and around Seattle have finally settled down, but residents of the The Emerald City probably still need a good way to beat the heat. Our suggestion is to head a few hours outside of the city proper and make Leavenworth your day trip destination. Not only will you be able to test out your kayaking and rafting skills, but you can also just sit back, relax, and slowly tube down the Wenatchee River.

The tubing season has finally opened on the river, and things will run until the end of summertime—we’re thinking that means Labor Day. To get outfitted for your 2-mile down river journey, the outfitters at River Rider provide fancy tubes equipped with handles and cup holders—perfect for holding your Snapple.

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Tags: Boeing 787 Dreamliner / Boeing / Airline News / Airplane News / → All Tags

Boeing 787 Sharpening Number 2 Pencils For Its Final Tests

Update 06/23: Boeing has postponed the test flight of the Dreamliner on account of the need to reinforce an area. Uh oh.

June 28 is going to be a huge day for Boeing and its network of suppliers, not to mention for air travelers hoping for more pleasant flights. After loads of testing this week, the Boeing 787 Dreamliner will hopefully take to the skies for its first test flight. Even if everything goes well, it will still be a while before we ride in the back with our iPhones set to airplane mode—but this is still pretty exciting.

Before the flight test, the plane will go through a final phase of ground testing known as the final gauntlet. For 48 hours, the plane will be pushed to its limits to further address issues that were found during factory testing and the intermediate gauntlet. This should start sometime today, and will be followed by a couple days of analysis. Sounds like the break room coffee pot will be working overtime as the engineers try to figure everything out.

If the plane does well on the ground, it will soon be taxiing under its own power as it takes its Rolls Royce Trent 1000 engines for a spin. Tempting as it might be to just rip it down the runway, Boeing still has to be extra careful before putting the pedal to the medal. If everything goes according to plan, then a five-and-a-half hour test flight will take place on Sunday.

We’ll go ahead and assume that a successful test flight will be followed by a celebratory kegger on the assembly line.

Related Stories:
· Boeing Has Another Full Week Of 787 Tests [Aviation Week]
· Delta Dumps Dreamliner Because It's Sick Of Waiting [Jaunted]
· Airline News coverage [Jaunted]

[Photo: Wikimedia]

Tags: Starbucks Alternatives / Sexpresso / Coffee Shops / Bizarre / → All Tags

'Sexpresso' Stands Proliferate; Will They Put the ‘Bux Out of Biz?

We’ve been covering the saga of Maine’s Topless Coffee Shop pretty religiously here on Jaunted, so we’re pleased (and a little perplexed) to report that the concept of barely-clothed baristas has now officially spread from coast to coast.

We don’t know how we missed this one up until now, but it turns out the birthplace of coffee shops itself—Washington State—is pioneering a new trend of so-called “sexpresso” stands like Lakewood’s Hot Hut and the mini-chain Moulin Brew, which has locations in Yakima and Tacoma. The stands all feature lattes served by female baristas who wear outfits that Starbucks most certainly would not approve of. No one is actually topless, but there’s an awful lot of duct tape and not much actual clothing. It's a bit like the thrill of watching scrambled adult cable channels.

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Tags: Beer Festivals / Beer Travel / Beer / Events / Seattle / → All Tags

Seattle's Beer Festival Welcomes Drinkers and Their Dogs

Seattle is famous for their weather and their coffee, but they've slowly been making their way onto the beer scene as well. After all, they aren't too far away from Portland, a city that has more breweries than anywhere else in the country. To celebrate this new beer fame, they’re welcoming one and all to the Seattle International Beer Festival.

On July 3-5, hop heads and beer bellies from around the country will gather at the Seattle Center Mural Amphitheatre to test out the latest and greatest from the world of beer. There will be over 150 varieties on tap and in bottles just waiting for you to sample them. We just hope there aren’t too many coffee-flavored porters hanging around, because those are less than tasty.

Tickets are $20, a price that includes admission, tasting glass, live music and ten beer tickets. Unfortunately unlimited samples aren’t available here, so you’ll need to buy more tickets for $1 each if you’re still thirsty. Also, depending on the “swank factor”—their words not ours—your sample can cost between one and four tickets. For those early risers, there’s a Happy Hour between noon and 1:00 pm where you’ll get five extra beer tickets.

Once you’ve paid for your ticket, you are welcome to visit all three days of the festival; there’s no re-entry fees. So feel free to bring your dog the next day—they’re welcome inside— so you have someone to gripe to about your hangover.

Related Stories:
· Seattle International Beerfest [Official Site]
· Trips We Love: The Year in Beer [Jaunted]
· Beer coverage [Jaunted]

[Photo: Official Site]

Tags: Twilight Travel / Celeb Travel / Cruising With Celebs / Cruises / → All Tags

Vampires Versus Pirates: "Twilight" Cruise Sets Sail In 2010

Leave your garlic at home: fans of Stephenie Meyer's Twilight series and the subsequent movies take to the high seas next year when the first Twilight Cruise and Convention at Sea sets sail in August 2010.

Offered by a new company called Cruises Cruises Cruises, the Seattle-to-Juneau trip August 8-15 already has two Cullen RSVPs—Alice and Emmett (uh, Kellan Lutz and Ashley Greene to you). On-board activities include movie viewings as the sequel "New Moon" should be out on DVD by then, a costume ball and trivia contests. Is it too much to hope for vampire baseball too?

"Twihards" with extra time can opt in on a 4-day bus tour beforehand that will take them to Forks and La Push, Washington, which both feature prominently in Twilight and were used as sets for the first movie before production. But start saving your allowance now: cabins on the cruise start at $1049 for a double, with the bus tour at $449.

For a moment we thought vampires actually couldn't get wet, but wait, that's witches. Still, how will a night-dwelling people protect their sparkly skin on the high seas? Pack your SPF 5,000!

Related Stories:
· Twilight fans get chance to cruise with vampire film stars [Guardian.co.uk]
· Alaska Twilight Cruise and Convention at Sea [Twilight Fans Cruise]
· Twilight coverage [Jaunted]

[Still from "Twilight" of Edward Cullen and some chick: SIlive.com]