Strong Museum

One, National Toy Hall of Fame, Live Butterfly Garden, Hands-On Exhibits, Food Court

Play is taken seriously at the second-largest children's museum in the country, home to the world's largest collection of toys, dolls, and play-related artifacts and to the National Toy Hall of Fame. Within its 282,000-square-foot footprint are interactive exhibits like Reading Adventureland, where you follow a yellow-brick road into a pop-up book of life-size literary creations; Sesame Street...

This imaginative place -- a "national museum of play" -- is a splendid interactive museum for children and almost certain to entertain adults, too. It is simply one of the finest children's museums in the country. There's a re-creation of Sesame Street, a miniature grocery store where kids can shop and even scan their own groceries, and a fantastic dance lab and radio station where kids make...

With a retro-swanky decor (right down to the reel-to-reel tape recorder and giant hi-fi amplifier in the bookcase), this place looks as though it were lifted from the Playboy Mansion in 1967. Sipping cocktails and people-watching are the main activities at this see-and-be-seen place toward the north end of Belltown's boulevard of bars.

The National Museum of Play® is the only collections-based museum in the world devoted solely to play.