The one thing we were uncertain of before landing at Keith and Sara's pad was how well our little dog Bebe would get along with their big cat Spike. Our fears were all for naught, as the two got along great pretty much right off the bat! They played with each other all week, with only minor hissing and barking, no clawing, and no blood drawn. We were pretty wiped our first day there, and we wanted Bebe to adjust to her surroundings before leaving her alone, so we just watched TV and played video games all day.
Our second day in Seattle, Lily and I biked down to the Space Needle area and went to the Experience Music Project (EMP) and Science Fiction museum, which are both inside a crazy Frank Gehry-designed building. Keith lent us his Prime card, which got us in to both museums for $5/each (normally $15/each). EMP was fun - especially the Seattle area music history exhibit, and the interactive rock band instruments area. I enjoyed the Science Fiction museum even more. It aroused the inner nerd inside me with all its cool Star Trek, Star Wars, and other geeky memorobilia, and it sparked both of our lost interests in reading sci fi books.
The next day, Lily and I walked around the neighborhood and went to a couple of used bookstores in Capitol Hill. We bought a few cheap sci fi books that should keep us occupied for the rest of the trip. We have way too many books in our camper at this point! At night, Keith and Sara took us out to dinner at Dahlia Lounge, which is one of Tom Douglas's restaurants. It was a lot of fun to go out with them, but I was not impressed with dinner - it was good, but not great (more in the food blog when I get around to actually writing about food one of these days).
Pike's Place Market was our destination on Thursday, and we took a nice walk down Capitol Hill and through downtown to waterfront where it is located. The walk wasn't nearly as nice on our way back from the market, up the hill, with big shopping bags full of our bounty from the market. Really - every city should have a market like Pike's Place in Seattle. It's main draw is tourists, who come to see people at one stall throw a fish back and fourth over the counter (how stupid is that?). We came for the spring produce and some fish. We also grabbed a lunch of fried shrimp and fries and a cheap day-old loaf of apple cinnamon bread from a great little bakery. After the haul back to Keith and Sara's place, I took advantage of the nice day and their balcony and cooked a nice dinner of grilled trout, grilled asparagus, grilled spring onions, and couscous (not grilled, obviously).
On Friday, Keith took us on a great driving tour of Seattle. The first stop was a tiny little park on Queen Anne Hill, which had this view of Seattle with Mt. Saint Helens in the background:
From there, he drove us over to Gasworks Park, which is an old oil refinery right on the bay that was converted into a beautiful park. We had a nice picnic lunch there of pastrami, cheese, crackers, and mangos that we bought at the market the day before.
Next, Keith schauffered us to the Fremont Troll, a very cool public art project/cement sculpture of a giant troll under a bridge in the neighborhood.
Lily got a nice one of me trying to pick a winner.
Lastly, we had the pleasure of visiting Theo chocolate factory where we weren't able to take a tour, but we were still allowed to eat as much high quality chocolate as we wanted for free (our favorite was coconut curry - we were skeptical, but it is actually quite awesome).
-Ben
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