Seattle in Brief

 I'm not going to write a whole long post about our trip to Seattle. Suffice it to say we went there and saw all the usual sights. Instead, this is a briefer post focusing on the highlights.

First, this was the first trip the four of us have taken together in eleven years - since a somewhat disastrous to Orlando when the boys were still in high school. That was really nice in and of itself. The four of us have been together at home plenty of times since then, but we haven't travelled or spent this kind of extended time where we're all doing things together. So that was nice.

Look! We enjoy spending time together!

The trip got off to a good start when we all got to SEATAC airport at the same time (serendipitous thanks to Ted having missed his original flight), met up easily, shared a taxi into town and had an excellent meal at a place we chose somewhat at random because it was near our townhouse rental - and then the rental was ready early for us to check in just as we finished lunch.

Look! We all enjoy eating udon together while waiting to check into our townhouse rental!

On our first full day (Tuesday) we went to the area of the Space Needle - but we didn't go up in the needle (most of us had been up it before). We went to the Chihuly Garden and Museum, featuring the glass art of Dale Chihuly - a highlight of the trip, and then to the Museum of Popular Culture, which was something of a mishmash, but still fun. After visiting those sights we refreshed ourselves in the coffee shop at radio station KEXP (I knew the station because I watch a lot of "Live from KEXP" videos. David (who had been there before) had described it as a "chill coffee shop" which indeed it was.

Examples of Chihuly glass art

Look! We enjoy spending time together at a "chill coffee shop"!

In the evening Valerie and I got together with a close high school friend of mine who I rarely get to see since she's spent her career living hither and yon as she has built her (highly successful) medical career. Currently she's Executive Director of some medical center. Ted and David went to a climbing gym.

View from our dinner table

With my old friend Sara

On our second full day (Wednesday) Ted, David and I set out to hike at Mount Si, but technical glitches bolloxed up our plans - and may have saved Ted's life. We got off to a little bit of a slow start, futzing around at "home" then first going over to the Amazon Go store to buy lunch food (and also to experience Amazon's super high-tech no checkout technology). We were so busy goofing around at the Amazon store (we realized in retrospect) that forgot to check the ingredients of the sandwich he picked up. 

We didn't have a rental car (not needed in the middle of a city) so we picked up a carshare (rental by the hour) car - which you rent, unlock and start via a phone app. We then drove out to Mount Si where, fortunately before shutting off the car I noticed that we didn't have data service. I realized that there could be a problem unlocking and starting the car via the app, which required app connectivity to function. A call to the carshare company's tech support (we had phone service, though not data) confirmed this. So ... after driving around a little to see if we could find a nearby parking spot with connectivity (we couldn't) we decided to drive instead to Snoqualmie Falls, where we had good connectivity in the parking lot and so felt comfortable shutting off and leaving the car. 

As a place to hike, Snoqualmie is very much like Great Falls in Virginia - it's pretty developed and you're never too far into the wilderness - but it's still outdoors and pretty. We parked at the parking lot at the top of the falls and hiked the relatively short (though steep) trail to the bottom of the falls, where we stopped for lunch. A little while into our lunch break Ted realized he wasn't feeling right. He checked the label on his sandwich and discovered it had a pesto spread made with nuts to which he is allergic. Soon he turned beet red and started spitting up goop. We decided to hightail it back to the car and head for a nearby shopping center where there was a drug store (where we could get Benadryl) and an Urgent Care center (if needed). By the time we got there, Ted felt like he needed the Urgent Care place. They took him right away, shot him with an Epipen, then advised us to go over to the nearby hospital ER for follow-up, which we did. At the hospital they gave him more meds and monitored him for a few hours. The bottom line is that it was scary but he was fine, but who knows what would have happened if we had hiked at Mount Si and had taken our lunch break miles from the car - and maybe hadn't even been able to start the car to return.

By dinnertime everyone was all better. We ordered out for biangbiang noodles - something which doesn't exist in the DC area and which was quite delicious.

Snoqualmie Falls

Ted hanging out at a "chill" ER at Snoqualmie Valley Hospital

Ted and I have enjoyed the hobby of geocaching (Ted still does it) and so Thursday morning we made a pilgrimage to the Geocaching.com headquarters in the Fremont neighborhood at the north end of the city. At Geocaching HQ they have a nice lobby display area - sort of a mini museum of geocaching - and of course, you can log your visit as a geocache. After that we tried to g on a factory tour of Theo Chocolates, but we were informed by a rather rude attendant that the tours were sold out for the day and that we needed to leave. So, we bought some chocolate at the company store (I chose hot pepper chocolate and milk chocolate with quinoa crisps to ensure that Valerie wouldn't steal any of mine) and then went for lunch at a pulmeni (Russian dumpling) restaurant called Tsar which David recommended. They royally screwed up our order, but the food was good. The people who run the place are Ukranian - I'm betting that they're currently regretting that they went with Russian rather than Ukranian branding and decor.

In the afternoon David went off to buy a vintage camera (don't ask how this came about), while Ted, Valerie and I visited Pike Place Market. We poked our heads into a store of a kind that doesn't exist in Virginia just to see what it was like (no, I didn't buy anything), then headed home - Valerie was a trooper and walked over three miles that day. 

Statue in front of the building which houses Geocaching HQ

The display area at Geocaching HQ

Pike Place Market

Accordion Cat at Pike Place Market!

Look! We enjoy visiting classic tourist sights together!

On Friday we went to Pioneer Square, where we went on the underground tour. Valerie and I had done this tour years ago, but i was still fun to see and to be reminded of the bizarre way the original part of the city had been built (in short, at one point they raised the street level, resulting in the first floors of all the existing buildings being underground). While waiting for our tour we had lunch at a Mod Pizza then killed time in the main square, where there were buskers providing entertainment. 

Oh - I think it was this morning that we went to the Starbucks Reserve, which is to Starbucks as Disneyworld is to a shopping mall Disney Store. The place was enormous. They roast coffee there - and not just any coffee; they focus on rare beans. They sell a large variety of coffee-related stuff. There are several food bars. Needless to say, they offer a very wide selection of coffee drinks, including flights of different coffees for you to taste (like a flight of beer, but with coffee).

Inside the Starbucks Reserve

Having had big meals the previous nights we opted just to get dinner from the Whole Foods salad bar. We also knew that we didn't want to stuff ourselves because we needed to leave room for dessert at Hot Cakes, where we were going to officially celebrate David's birthday.

Look! We enjoy expensive dessert places!

The birthday boy!

To tell you the truth, Hot Cakes was a bit of a disappointment. The service was slow, the molten cake wasn't really anything special, and the cookies and ice cream which I ordered was pretty second rate - the cookies weren't that good. And each dessert cost on the order of $13! I got the feeling that this was the kind of place young Amazon employees with too much money in their pockets would frequent because it was hip, rather than it being a place worth visiting for the food. Well, whatever - we had a good time and put back all the calories we had missed by having salad for dinner.

On Saturday David said his farewells. He was staying out in Seattle longer and went to join up with his friends (David has friends everywhere!). Ted and I went kayaking/paddle boarding, and we dropped Valerie off at a nearby museum to kill time while we hit the water. Years ago I sneaked in a little paddling on Lake Union while on a business trip to Seattle. I was impressed by the rental place - real kayaks and gear, and they seemed actually to be paddlers. Unfortunately, that rental place is no longer there and the only one on Lake Union is a money machine renting out rec boats and paddleboards - consider it the city's equivalent of Key Bridge Boathouse. Maybe it was a mistake going on a Saturday - and a warm sunny one, at that - but the place was mobbed, and our time on the water was mostly spent dodging other paddlers, as well as a kids' sailboat camp which kept sailing back and forth through the same area. One novelty was the need to stay out of the way of seaplanes, which take off and land from a (fortunately well marked) zone nearby on the lake. Ted and I paddled together - in a rec boat I was a pretty good match for his speed - and looked at some of the houseboats on the lake, as well as the big commercial ships. It wasn't the most serene kayaking I've done, but it was still pleasant.

Seaplane coming in for a landing on the lake

Ted paddle boarding

Seaplane taxiing amongst the paddlers after landing

We had lunch in some very Seattle-ish vegetarian sandwich place, checked out the REI flagship store, then headed home. Once we got back Valerie rested (the day had included a lot of walking), while Ted and I went out to the local Elysian brewpub for a pint. In the evening we got food from a ramen restaurant our landlord/host had recommended - really good, but we actually liked the udon place better,

We had our last day planned pretty well - if we checked out of the townhouse at the checkout time and headed straight to the airport the timing would work out just right - except that our flight was delayed, as all flights seem to be these days. So, we started off with a leisurely breakfast at Eltana bagels. We had spotted Eltana in the neighborhood the day we arrived, and I had bought bagels there earlier in the week. To put it succinctly, their bagels are terrible. They boil them (good) in honeyed water (bad) before baking, so they come out way too sweet. One morning when I went out for a run I spotted another bagel place, but it was much further away (outside Valerie's walking range) and so we stuck with Eltana. In their favor, I will note that their coffee drinks were quite good, and their coffee cups were custom printed with the word "מִשְׁפָּחָה‎" on them, which means "family" in Hebrew - the idea being that when you come they're you're welcomed as part of the family.

We passed this building on the way to the airport. I don't know if it's Starbucks HQ, but it's the most Starbucksy architecture I've ever seen.

After our bagel breakfast we still had time to fill before our flight. Ted's flight wasn't until later, so he decided to grab another carshare car and drive us to the airport, stopping along the way at the Outdoor Research factory store, and then at Angle Lake Park, a pleasant little park located close to the airport.

When the time came, Ted dropped us at the airport. We said our sad farewells (we'll see him again at Thanksgiving) and we headed home.

Mt. Rainier peeking up through the clouds. Not a great picture, but a very cool sight.