SB: Wednesday

Wednesday morning we woke up at 5am (unfortunately I didn't fall asleep around 3am) to get ready for our trip to the Northwest! We did most of the packing the night before, but had to finish up the suitcases and pack the bathroom stuff. Ramsi and Bez came and picked us up at 7am to take us to the airport. It didn't take long to get there and our flight didn't leave until 9:20, so we decided to eat breakfast in the airport. We ate at Chili's. haha! We eat dinner there at least once a week, so we thought it was funny that we found a way to eat breakfast there too! :) They had really good breakfast tacos, and you know how awesome their salsa is! Yum! It was a nice way to start the trip!

This was on the way...it was so cool to look out the window of the plane and see such different landscape than what we are used to. I think this was over New Mexico or Colorado, but I'm not certain.

Yippee! We finally made it to Seattle! From the plane, all you could see were hugh pine trees (Washington is The Evergreen State!), water, and tall tall buildings. It's very cool...like mixing New York, the forest, and the ocean/lakes all into one setting.

As soon as our flight landed we got a rental car (toyota prius because we love the earth) and headed downtown to Seattle.

Parking is crazy there, so we paid our $20 for a few hours of parking and then headed out to explore. After learning (the hard way) that in Seattle a Cafe really only has coffee (like not a morsel of food) we found this cute little shop called "Sisters Sandwich: European Snacks." The food was tasty and warm, but this was our first experience with food being way more expensice in the Northwest than it is in the South. After lunch, we headed to the famous Market area...

The market area is really cool. There are tons of little shops and also vendors set up on the streets and in alleys and whatnot. You could find anything in this area, and there was so much to see and take in. Zac recognized a little restaurant from "Sleepless in Seattle" so we went inside, just to look, and found this bar stool with a plaque that read "Tom Hanks sat here."

It was fun to watch the fish guys. They are all pretty much young and personable. When someone orders something, one of them yells out the order, and then they all yell and repeat it back. It's pretty entertaining. I meant to take a video, but I think I was too mesmerized. I started talking to this one guy and said "y'all" and he was like "woah! Where are you from?" When we told him Texas, he got very excited, handed my camera to a stranger, and then gave Zac and I each a big cold nasty squishy fish to hold. It was pretty funny. And totally gross! haha

Thank goodness they had a hand washing station. Yuk! I don't like to eat fish...much less hold it while it's still all stinky and cold. As we continued walking, this "Newsie" looking guy with green hair and nail polish asked if we wanted to try an amazing apple. I never pass up free food (unless it's fish) so of course I wanted to try it. As he was cutting it for me, I said "is this clean" and he laughed and said "Yeah, but are YOU clean?" haha, at least he had a sense of humor! By the way...the apple was AMAZING! I would have bought a few but I did not want to have to carry it around Seattle with me, which proved to be a good decision since we walked for literally five hours straight all over the city!

Seattle is very dog friendly. There were dogs everywhere, even in shops! We saw this French Bulldog, and even though it was no Molly, and not even a Boston Terrier, it reminded me of her and so I had to stop and pet him and get a pic. :)

"Julia, will you accept this rose?" haha, since we were in Seattle, I could not resist taking a picture with a red rose as a tribute to The Bachelor. I told Zac that if I saw Jason I was going to tell him that Melissa is too good for him anyways, but, sigh...I never saw him.

After walking around the market for quite some time, we decided to take the monorail over to the Space Needle. Zac wasn't super excited about the SN, being that he hates heights, but he liked it once we were up there.

It is an amazing view of Seattle, and we were a good pair, because I took in the big picture, and he would point out cool little details.


This picture of Lake Union reminds me of a pic I took from the top of Rockefeller in NYC, except the buildings are surrounding Central Park, instead of a lake.



Buildings, building, buildings, and water all around...

I had to get a warm drink because it was so cold and windy up there. Everyone in Seattle is obsessed with coffee (there are coffee shops EVERYWHERE!), but we don't like coffee, so I settled for hot cocoa! :)

We bought roundtrip tickets on the monorail, so we could get back to the market area and our car after the Space Needle, but we ended up deciding to walk back instead. It was a long walk, and I am pretty sure I whined alot the whole time (SORRY ZAC!!) but it was fun, and actually one of the highlights of the day! We saw alot of stuff we would not have seen otherwise, like the Olympic Sculpture Park.
This might look like a tree, but it is a silver metal tree, so I guess that makes it a statue.

Walking through the sculpture park...



Near Pier 70...

Back to the market area...finally! :)

When we got back in the car, we headed for Kent, WA. Zac's Uncle Bill and his family live in Kent, which is about 20 minutes south of Seattle. On the way out of town Zac was excited to see Qwest Stadium and Safeco, where the Seattle pro teams play.

The drive was super quick and we saw lots of pretty trees and a sunset.

Before we knew it, we were in Kent. We thought it was going to be a small town, but it is actually pretty big! For my Austin readers, I would compare it to Cedar Hill and Leander combined. We found a cute shopping center and ate at a scrumptious pizza place. They even had vanilla Italian soda, so of course I had to get one. YUM!
We got to Uncle Bill's house around 9 and visited for awhile before we hit the sack. On Texas time, we were awake and busy from 5am-Midnight...it was quite an amazing, but tiring day! :)

Thursday post coming soon....