On my recent Seattle trip, I finally got around to seeing the International Fountain in Seattle Center. It was originally built for the 1962 World’s Fair, but then rebuilt to be more family friendly in 1995 — and since then, it’s apparently been a family gathering spot on warm, sunny days. Seattle doesn’t see that many warm, sunny days in April — so I was ridiculously lucky to be there at just the right time…
The fountain has built-in speakers, and the water sprays are somehow synchronized to the music. From the looks of things, one of the local traditions is to see if you can stay dry while running up to touch the fountain then running back away from it. As you might expect, the kids seemed to enjoy this the most — but it was a blast to watch them playing.
One little girl I saw went from tentative to fully engaged in less than 5 minutes (the last of these shots is on my flickrstream, by the way):
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