A week after our 8th wedding anniversary, which was also the day after Father's Day, Jason and I took off for a trip to Seattle. Jason was going for a couple of days for work and I was desperate to tag along. I'd never been before. We were able to tack a few days on to the end of the work stuff for a couple of sightseeing days thanks to my wonderful, generous mother who stayed here with the kiddos.
Because Microsoft paid for Jason's flights and our credit card miles paid for mine, Jason and I were on seperate planes. He took off about an hour and a half before me. We each took the bus to the airport (separately). My plane ended up being delayed a bit. Would you believe that it was my first time ever to fly by myself? I flew as an "unaccompanied minor" with my sister Jessica starting at about age 9 or 10. I'm no stranger to plane trips...but every flight I've always had a spouse, sibling, parent, or child(ren) along with me. So this flight was nice. I didn't have to pack a bag of stuff to entertain a small person for a few hours. I didn't have to take anyone to the stinky, cramped airplane bathroom. I didn't have to attempt to comfort my distraught little sister over whichever parent we were leaving and her nausea-inducing fear of flying. I didn't have to remind anyone not to kick the seat in front. I was able to read the entire time! And sip a ginger ale. I think the only time I talked was to say, "Ginger ale, please". And I never once had to get up out of my seat. I was on the aisle and the middle seat was empty. I'm telling you, flying solo was nearly half the reason I wanted to go along on this trip. Sometimes it's nice to just do nothing.
When I arrived at the Sea-Tac airport, Jason was waiting for me at my gate having eaten lunch and doing a little work on his laptop while he waited.
We headed to the shuttle to take us to the rental car place and then we got the car and hopped right in and drove away.
No trying to entertain 3 little ones in a rental car garage while Daddy installed the car seats...we just threw our suitcases in the trunk and admired the empty back seat.
And, since it was Seattle and all, of course it rained:
We made it to hotel #1: the Silver Cloud Inn in Redmond. It was the digs Microsoft was paying for for Jason to go to his training at the Microsoft campus up the road. It was nice enough...
Jason's on the phone there talking to our friend Rob (also his co-worker) who was staying a few doors down. We settled in and touched base with Rob who wanted to eat in and watch some basketball game so just J and I headed to the Redmond Town Center for dinner. We walked around for a bit before deciding on Matt's Rotisserie and Oyster Lounge where I ate probably one of the most delicious burgers of my life. So yum!
Jason and Rob had training the next day (Tuesday). I had big plans to sleep in while away but, with the time zone being an hour behind what my body is used to, the sink being in the main part of the room rather than the bathroom, and my sweet hubby giving my forehead a gentle kiss good-bye...well, I couldn't sleep in. But that's okay. I could stay in my bed and read and eat licorice and be lazy before heading down to the hotel's breakfast instead of catering to my 3 tinies like my mom would be doing at home. :)
But I did have to bolt out of bed at one point: our room was on the top floor of the hotel which was the 4th floor. And there I am in my p.j.'s reading with the window open and all of a sudden, some dude starts raising himself up on one of those elevator machine thingies to do some work on the hotel. Ack!
I shut the curtains real quick and then snuck that picture. Certainly wasn't expecting that!
I decided to head back to the Redmond Town Center for some shopping but I missed my turn and ended up on the Microsoft campus and decided to check that out for a bit first instead. I found their visitors center:
...only to learn it was closed for a private event that day. D'oh! So I wandered around the gift shop for a spell...took a picture of this thing that means nothing to me but is apparently popular among some gamers:
...and then I left for the Redmond Town Center for real this time. I did a little shopping and evenutally headed back to the hotel to meet up with Jason. We planned to hit a movie and dinner at the really cool sounding iPic Theater in the Redmond Town Center. We got all the way there and when Jason saw the $18 price tag for just the movie (not the food or drinks) we walked right back out. :) We drove around trying to find something for dinner and ended up at Red Robin. Not too unique. Oh well. We went swimming in the hotel pool and hot tub and watched "Wanderlust" on the hotel Pay-per-View.
On Wednesday I took it easy in the morning for a bit again, ate the hotel breakfast, and then I headed back to the Redmond Town Center yet again. I had plans to meet up with an old friend of my sister's who now lives in the Seattle area. She and her 3 kids drove to meet me and we grabbed some Starbucks and hung around one of the play areas to chat. It was nice to see a familiar face, but she and I really aren't friends other than on Facebook. She was a year behind Jessica in school which means she was 3 years behind me. I graduated (and was semi-friends with) her older sister, though. Her kids were cute and it was a nice way to spend the morning. She had to leave to get her daughter to afternoon kindergarten and then I did a bunch more solo-shopping. I stopped for a lunch of my favorite: mac and cheese:
Then I got in the car, got on the phone with my sister Jessica and just started driving. I drove till I hit water. The water of Lake Washington, apparently:
I hung out there for a bit with the desperate sun-seekers of Seattle. I mean, the sun really did not come out much whilst we were there but it was out that day. It was all of, like, 68 degrees or something and everyone and there mother was there at the lake laying out in their bikinis and just enjoying the "warm" weather. I wonder if the rate of depression is higher up there as opposed to Colorado where the sun shines at least 300 days of the year? I just looked it up: Seattle averages a mere 58 sunny days in a year. I would go nuts, personally. Sure "everything is so green" there, but dude, I found that to be a bit annoying, to be perfectly honest. This is the view from just driving down a regular ol' road:
See that? See how there are so many trees I can hardly tell what stores are behind them all? And this corner? I don't even know what's behind there! All that green sure made navigating the Emerald City a bit more difficult.
That night I was on my own as Jason and Rob had plans to go for dinner and drinks with an old co-worker who recently moved to Microsoft in Redmond. Their pal Jim said he'd get them home safely so I drove J and Rob to downtown Bellevue for their big night on the town and told them to text me if they needed a ride later. And then I was on my own again. I did more shopping at various strip malls, found a Trader Joe's to stop in...
And then I ended up back at the same, boring Red Robin to eat by myself while I read on my Kindle app on my phone:
And Jason ended up calling for a ride home after all. So I got dressed again and headed out at 11 something to get the hubster back safely.
Thursday Jason was done with training but did have a few meetings. He went to some early and then came back and we checked out of our hotel and rushed him over to a meeting he thought he'd be late for. I couldn't figure out why he was thinking he'd be so late but I went along with it and rushed him over to the building in the car. Two minutes later he called with a sheepish, "My meeting isn't for another hour, can you come get me?" (time zone confusion on his computer) and we went to lunch at a very nice cafeteria on the campus. It was so cheap too! But cash only so I had to fork over some of the cash I was going to use to get home on the bus. But lunch was excellent. And it almost felt like we were sitting in EPCOT or something with the various nationalities dining nearby and the fountains flowing in the background with the pristine landscaping.
After lunch I took Jason back to his meeting which he was plenty on time for and headed over to the now-open Visitor's Center. I found $5 in the parking lot to replace the $5 I'd just given J for lunch. Score!
The Visitor's Center really wasn't that fun for someone like me but would've been cool if I wanted to play Xbox or Kinect. Or if I didn't already have a Windows phone. It let me kill that hour while J was in his meeting, though, and finding the five bucks was certainly the highlight.
Finally his meeting was over and I picked him up and work stuff was over and it was OUR time! I drove us into Seattle
and we returned our rental car and walked the few blocks to our downtown hotel: the Red Lion. We paid for this one out of pocket but we still got a scorchin' deal through Microsoft. However, the only rooms available with this deal had two queen beds instead of one king. No worries. We have a queen at home. And we actually slept in the separate beds on our last night! Ha ha ha!
We had a great view of the Pike Place Market district and Puget Sound beyond:
Because it was sunny and you just can't count on that day-to-day in Seattle, we decided we best take advantage and make this the day we headed to the Space Needle. And we decided to walk. First we stopped in this interesting courtyard not too far from our hotel. The trees were painted blue and they had a giant chess game going on:
We stopped outside the Escala apartment building on our way and if you know what that is, shame on you. ;) Shame on me too really, right?
Then we made it down towards the Space Needle:
And the KOMO news building which is what they use as the exterior of Seattle Grace Hospital on Grey's Anatomy:
As we were in line for Space Needle tickets, I got a call from home. It seems they'd hit a bit of a wall and Easton was starting to have some troubles with me being away. I knew it meant he'd just gotten into trouble, and I was right, but we talked for a bit and I told him what we were about to do and that I'd send pictures.
Jason was all excited about Mount Rainier back there.
The boys know I have quite a fear of heights and apparently were all, "I bet Mom is so scared." :) I was super nervous as we were walking towards the Space Needle but once we were actually up there I settled a bit and did rather okay. We bought me an adorable shirt in the gift shop and headed out. (We ended up having to return the shirt because on the last day, I put it on and it had a hole in it. I wanted to exchange it but there were no more that would fit me or in the next size up. :( )
We saw where they were setting up for the Rock and Roll Marathon at the base of the Needle. Our neighbor across the street was supposed to be there running it but she'd had surgery and some unexpected complications and couldn't come. I felt sad for her seeing all the race stuff being set up.
Jason and I continued our walk back towards the main part of downtown stopping at this big firehouse bell on our way:
We stopped back into the hotel and decided on a place for dinner. Jason picked the Pike Brewing Company in the Pike Place Market:
I had a very interesting and delicious raspberry lambic which tasted like juice and not alcohol (admittedly the alcohol content is quite low) and a very tasty mac and cheese made with Scotch Ale. Super good. I ate every bite and wished I had more. But instead we headed out from the market and went down towards the waterfront:
We headed back to our hotel with plans to come back to really check out the market in the morning.
In the morn, we saw them throw around some fish and Jason admired all the seafood. Blech.
He took a picture of me by the flowers:
We grabbed coffee:
We ate tasty crumpets:
We checked out some some shops and silly-named merch:
Stopped by the original Starbucks:
Are you as glad as I am they've since cropped the boobies out of their logo?
Sampled fancy cheeses at several of the creamerys:
At this one you could actually watch the cheese being made in gigantic vats. Mmmmm.
A little tomfoolery as we checked out more of the market:
We picked up a bunch of things for an in-room picnic: a sampler of cheeses for me with some bread, some fresh raspberries, J picked a sampler of smoked salmons, some apple slices, a metal container of chardonnay, some Tim's Cascade potato chips...
This is for you, Kelli:
My childhood best friend, Kelli, went to college in Tacoma, WA and loved these chips. I remember her bringing them home for us to sample in college. :)
After our picnic lunch, we bought monorail tickets (it was raining pretty hard) and rode back north up to the Seattle Center area (where the Space Needle is) to visit the Experience Music Project museum. It's also science fiction and pop culture...not just "music".
So we checked out the "Avatar" exhibit:
And the horror movie section:
They had some various movie props on display...who knows if they're real? My guess is replicas. But here is Darth Vader's headpiece when he takes off his helmet in Episode VI:
And someone's light saber:
We texted this pic of Yoda's cane and necklace to Dalton (our Yoda fan):
This one's obvious:
The museum had a really cool tower of guitars.
And it seemed like a good background for a new Facebook profile pic. ;)
We then checked out a bunch of the music stuff. Mostly I watched Jason. :)
Here's a sampling of him noodling around on the various instruments...
(I was asked to not use my flash in the museum after awhile.)
Eventually we hopped back on the monorail back to our hotel to try to figure out dinner. It was a Friday night and we hadn't planned ahead and couldn't really try any of the cool places. So we went to a Benihana. Boring.
We stopped for some gelato on our walk back.
Pike Place Market at night in the rain:
Then it was back to the hotel for the night.
The next day was our final day in Seattle. I was determined to get some latte art. This is the best I got:
We drank our coffees and ate pastries (the most delicious almond croissant EVER) while we waited for the aquarium to open:
I accused Jason of not being smiley enough in the picture I took before this one so that's the face he gave me for the re-do. Sigh.
We didn't want to actually go to the aquarium, but we were on the hunt for a stuffed turtle for Dalton and thought we might find one there in the gift shop. We didn't. But we found a souvenir for Autumn instead.
We walked some more of the waterfront and ended up near SAM--the Seattle Art Museum. Again, we didn't really want to go there...so we walked through the free parts and left:
We went back to Pike Place Market for lunch...and stopped for a pic with the famous pig out front:
I got some fancy mac and cheese to-go from one of the creamery's and we headed to get lunch where Jason had wanted to go...some Cajuny junk:
After lunch we went back to the hotel and I remember Jason put on a really boring movie on Netflix and I fell asleep. I think J did too. We lazed around for awhile before heading out towards some dinner. Our hotel had a couple of those British red phone booths...
On our way to dinner, we stopped first for a bunch of shopping at Old Navy and other stores:
They were having a really great sale and we got stuff for everyone. We had dinner at some Tap House. See all these taps???
And that wasn't even all of them! We got a couple of samplers:
After dinner we marveled at just how light it stays so late into the evening up in those northen latitudes such as Seattle:
It's never quite so bright blue sky that late in Colorado. Ever.
We finally moseyed back to our hotel to pack up.
Jason had a really early flight the next morning and mine wasn't too far behind. Hence the separate beds for that night. Hee hee. He headed out and I dozed a bit longer, showered, and grabbed some Starbucks on my way to catch the train to the airport. My mom and the kids picked up Jason at the airport and then the kids and Jason had lunch and turned right back around to come get me. Happy to be together again!
