Monday:
Boeing 787, 777 & 747 Assembly Plant Tour/Everett, Washington
Boeing's "jet factory" boasts the largest building known to man. Our tour guide spewed out one amazing fact after another about the size of this building, but two things particularly captured my attention....it houses 19 restaurants for it's 38,000 employees and they let their shifts out in six minute increments to keep traffic flowing smoothly....which takes two hours per shift!!!  She mentioned that it's footprint could accommodate 80 soccer games going all at once. 

There was a large room at the visitor center designated to display components of various aircraft, museum style.... and guests were also encouraged to use Boeing's outside balcony to observe the county airport runway adjacent to their visitor center, where new planes can be seen being taken on their initial test flight.  Other than a short movie to set up history of Boeing and a gift shop at the end...the hour and a half tour was mainly focused around going to the actual assembly plant (by bus) to view the production process.  A freight elevator (which had potential to hold much more tonnage than our 50 person group) took us near the top of this 11 story plant which hosts an observation balcony encircling the plant work area. From this vantage point we all had a great view of the whole process while our guide directed our attention here and there.  Their assembly room floor...which had dozens of these jumbo jets being built simultaneously today...was crawling with busy employees, each focused on their individual tasks. 

To my dismay...they didn't allow photos on this tour...in fact you weren't even allowed to bring anything along...even a purse.  The cost....$18 each...(and no "free samples of frequent flier miles given away at the end of the tour"....bummer).