Seattle – 23 July 2008
Joey’s cousin Marty invited us to his wedding on Orcas Island, Washington. We really wanted to support Marty and Brittney by attending their wedding. Since we had never been to Washington State, we decided to not only attend the wedding, but check out Seattle as well.
We woke up very early to catch our flight to Seattle. Thanks to the fact that we were flying west, we still had most of a day when we landed. We stopped and got coffee immediately – we were in Seattle, and we had been awake a very long time – what else could we do!
We got our rental car from Thrifty. They have a program called ‘Wild Car’. This means you pick the level of car you are willing to pay for, and then if they have something bigger or fancier in the lot when you pick the car up, you can have it at no additional cost. I decided to sign up for the wild car option since both Joey and Nancy would ride in the car, and they both have long legs. The wild car on the day we arrived was a Chrysler Town and Country – a mini van! We referred to it as the WILD CAR for the entire trip. It was quite comfortable.
Joey and I drove into Seattle and got settled into our hotel. The first room had no internet connection, so they moved us to another room. Although I did not realize it until a couple of days later, when we switched rooms, I left my knitting in a drawer in the first room. Unfortunately, the knitting was never recovered 🙁 That said, the second room was did the job.
We struck out on foot to see what we could find. We very quickly found the Space Needle (kind of hard to miss), and the park surrounding it. We wandered around and looked at everything. We found a cute sculpture garden with aquatic animal sculptures. Thanks to a tip from Sujata, we knew about the SciFi Museum in Seattle. We found it as we were exploring, and made a mental note to return when it was open!
After stretching our legs and getting oriented to the city, we were getting a bit hungry. The person at the front desk of our hotel suggested a local pub called McMenamins. We decided to check it out. It is local brew-pub chain (no knock against it) – the location was convenient, the staff was friendly, and space was comfortable (not corporate or photocopied). The food was delicious – Joey had fish and chips, and I had a hot spinach salad. The beer was lovely, brewed right there on site! I tried a beer called ‘Ruby’; it was a Hefewiessen with raspberry. The raspberry added a strong pink color, but not an overly sweet flavor. Almost everyone in in the pub had one on their table, so apparently I picked a popular beer. After dinner I tried a stout, which was really thick and chocolaty. Yum – perfect dessert!
After checking out a strange plant that we saw on our way back to the hotel, we crashed! We were pretty tired from the time change, and a day full of excitement.
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