The biggest of Seattle's museums, the Museum of Flight , a twenty-minute bus ride (#174) south of downtown at 9404 E Marginal Way (daily 10am-5pm, until 9pm on Thurs; $9.50, kids $5; ), is partly housed in the magnificently restored 1909 "Red Barn" that was the original Boeing manufacturing plant. Displays of 54 airplanes lead from ancient prototypes to the Wright Brothers, from the growth of Boeing to a gallery hung with twenty full-sized aircraft and a replica of John Glenn's 1962 Mercury space capsule. One unmistakable highlight is the chance to sit in the cockpit of an SR-71 Blackbird, the type of spy plane once used to fly 80,000 feet above the jungles of Vietnam.

Museum of Flight

• Museum of Flight

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