West Coast Vacation - Seattle Day 4

Our last day in Seattle was the one that Jay was looking forward to the most, out of our whole holiday, I believe.  Initially, we had planned our holiday so that we could be in Seattle so we could attend Chase Jarvis Live.  It is an online broadcast that takes place about once/month, put on by one of Jay's favorite photographers, Chase Jarvis.  We were disappointed to learn that the broadcast had to be rescheduled, and would not take place while we were in Seattle.  We found this out before we left for our holiday.  However, the staff at the studio still invited us to come and meet them, and see the studio and even offered to feed us lunch.  On Tuesday we headed over there just before lunch time.

Everyone at the studio was so friendly, and they had this awesome barbecue lunch for us.  Jay was so thrilled to see the studio, and to meet the people he had seen on Chase Jarvis Live.  We also got to meet Chase's wife, Kate, who was really nice.  We spent a very nice hour and a half at the studio, and both really enjoyed ourselves.

 (The studio had lots of nice natural light.  And they opened up the big garage door and it was such a lovely day.  And they don't have to worry about bugs coming in.  It was so nice!)

 (Waiting for the sausages to be bbqed for lunch.)

 (Chase Jarvis staff with one happy Jason)

 (A couple of shots of the studio.  It was a nice place!)

 After we were done we headed down to Seattle Center to check out Chihuly Garden and Glass.  Seattle Centre is a large area downtown where the Space Needle is.  It has a number of museums and other sights to see as well.  We didn't wander around too much, but we did check out the glass museum and really enjoyed it.  It is a number of displays of hand made glass sculptures made by Dale Chihuly.  There are indoor galleries that are beautifully lit, to really accentuate the detailed glass, and there is an outdoor, garden portion, which was neat as well.

 (Unique sculpture next to where we parked.)

 (Amazing hand made glass sculpture.  It musth ave been at least 10-15 feet tall.)

 (This room was so pretty.  The colourful glass in the ceiling, with lights shone through made the prettiest colourful light in that room.)

 (Such intricate detail.)

 (I stood next to this one to give some perspective on how large these chandeliers are.)

 (These bowls had such neat, swirled colour that almost looked like glowing lava.  Initially I thought that the light was inside the bowl, shining through, but in fact it was a spot light on the ceiling that made it glow.)

 (Got a shot of a bee!)

 (Such a nice contrast of colours.  The black part was all these little plants with black leaves.)

 (I photobombed Jay when he was taking a picture, haha)

 (The green thing was also a glass sculpture!  Almost looked like a plant.)

 (This sculpture made me think of rock candy.)

 (This building was the EMP museum.  I believe it is a music and pop culture museum.  Very unique looking.  We didn't go inside.)

After we were done here, we headed back toward our hotel.  We decided to try one more restaurant on the quaint little street in Kirkland where we had eaten at Cactus, Cafe Rococo, and this evening we went to a Thai restaurant called Lai Thai.  Jay enjoyed a nice curry and I had some pad thai.  It was a delicious way to bring an end to our time in Seattle/Kirkland.  

 (We noticed this condo building on Lake Washington on our way to supper and thought it was neat.)

(Supper at Lai Thai in Kirkland.)

West Coast Vacation - Seattle Day 3

One of things I was most excited about seeing in Seattle was Pike Place Market.  It is a farmer's market down by the water front that has been around since the early 1900s and is very popular with tourists and locals.  We got up early Monday morning and headed over there, and this time we decided to take the toll bridge.  It was SO much easier, and straight forward to get downtown.  The GPS did a good job of getting us down there, even with all the oddly angled streets in downtown Seattle.  We had a bit of trouble finding the public parkade at Pike Place but after getting a little frustrated, we found our way around the block and ended up finding a parking spot, within steps of the market!

 (A view of Puget Sound from Pike Place Market)

(We were amazed by how steep some of the roads were in Seattle, and certainly the ones down by Pike Place were the steepest we saw.  It was hard to get a photo with perspective, and this one seemed to work becuase of the straight line of the garage door in the background of the photo.)

The nice thing about parking in Seattle, is that with a handicapped placard, you can park at any meter without having to pay.  I can't remember what the time limit is, but it is quite extensive....possibly 24 or 36 hours, for free.  This was very handy!

When we first got to the market, it was about 9:30am, and the main market doesn't fully open until 10am.  When we got there, a lot of the vendors were just starting to set up their tables.  However, there weren't too many shoppers in there yet.  I was told before we went that it is super busy, and expect it to be shoulder to shoulder people, whenever you go.  It wasn't too bad.  Even though not all of the tables were set up when we got there by the time we made our way back through toward the van, we got to see them all set up. 

The food vendors were quite generous in giving samples to taste.  While we walked through, we were able to taste different types of cherries, peaches, nectarines and some dried fruit.  There was this one bakery across the street, that had a huge lineup of people down the sidewalk, and it smelled really good!  One of the fish vendors, every once in a while would give a shout to his coworker at the other end of the booth, then send a whole salmon or some crabs flying through the air and his buddy would catch them.  That was pretty cool to see as well.  There were so many sights and smells in that place.  It wasn't all food either.  There was plenty of handmade art, clothing, jewelry, etc.  Pretty neat!

 (Not sure what they were making, but this bakery smelled amazing!)

When we were done at Pike Place we headed over to Glazer's Camera for Jay to do some shopping.  I wasn't sure what to expect, but I think I thought it might be a bit bigger than it was.  I wasn't too interested in shopping there, but Jay bought a few items that he has enjoyed using since we got home. 

After that we decided to try a restaurant that had been recommended to Jay by a lady who works with a photographer in Seattle that Jay is a fan of (more on that tomorrow).  The restaurant was called The Whale Wins.  It was a unique experience.  It was a really nice place inside, and the way it was set up, all of the food is prepared behind counters right in plain sight.  So you watch all of the food being prepared at different stations.  The menu was quite unique.  It was explained to us that probably you should order a number of dishes and share them.  Each dish was about $10-15 and for two people you would probably want to order at least four dishes.  We started with a really tasty croissant with butter and jam.  Then we shared a roasted cauliflower salad.  For our entree, we decided to order the special, as everything on the menu looked a little, um, adventurous...for me.  Things like clams and sardines and some sort of seafood mousse, I think....yeah.  The special, I didn't quite hear what the waitress said, but I heard the word salmon, so figured we would be good.  When it came, it was beautifully plated, but I soon realized that it was raw salmon.  At first I thought maybe it was smoked salmon, it had that look to it, but it didn't taste smoked.  It turned out that it was called salmond gravlax, which when we looked it up explained that it is cured salmon.  I was not feeling too keen on eating it, so Jay had it, and I ordered another salad.  I have to say that the salad I ordered was probably one of the most delicious salads I have eaten!  It was a basic lettuce salad dressed with lemon juice and oil, but it had fresh chives, dill and tarragon in it.  It also had toasted pistachios and fresh parmesan cheese.  It was so flavorful and I enjoyed eating the whole thing!  Mmmm :)

 (Mmmm, love croissants!)

 (Lovely plating for raw salmon.)

When we finished lunch we headed over to Gas Works Park (which happens to be the park we were trying to check out when we ran into the naked cyclists on Saturday, haha).  It is a park with a big hill and nice views of downtown Seattle.  It is called Gas Works because there are old tanks and pipes that were left behind, which gives it a unique feel.  We enjoyed exploring around here for a while, then headed back toward Kirkland.

 (When we were taking pictures of each other, there was this guy taking pictures of us, taking pictures of each other.  We thought this was funny enough, but then he got on his bike and road away, then he went and was chasing some geese.  Not sure he was entirely with it....)

While our lunch was certainly flavorful, I would say that we were not all that full when we were done eating it.  So we decided that we would go for a late afternoon coffee.  When we went to Cactus for supper the previous night, we noticed a coffee shop, Cafe Rococo, across the street so decided to give it a try.  It was quite busy in there, but we snagged a table at the back and had a latte and shared a cookie.  I have to say the coffee was not the best, it was kind of bitter, but it was good to sit and relax after a busy day.  We appreciated that the city of Kirkland had good free Wi-fi, which was nice, since we didn't want to access data in the States.  After our coffee we headed back to the hotel for the evening, and just had some leftover snacks for supper.  We also enjoyed the one purchase we made at Pike Place, peaches!  They were huge, and SO juicy and sweet.  Best peach I have ever had!

 (Yum!)

West Coast Vacation - Seattle Day 2

This day, may have been our least exciting day.  When we decided to head down to the States, I knew that I wanted to check out some malls and do some shopping.  I also wanted to check out a grocery store or two.  We decided on our second day in Seattle, which was a Sunday, to do some shopping.  We got up and headed to Costco in Kirkland, which was not too far from our hotel.  I wouldn't say there was too much that leapt out at us, except when we first walked in the door, right to the left was a display of Kirkland brand vodka and wine.  This was the first time we had seen booze in a non-liquor store.  It felt like a bit of a novelty.  I was curious how things would be different down there.  It wasn't really all that different.  There were a few things that were cheaper, food-wise, and the alcohol was less expensive.  We had a good look around and only ended up buying Velveeta 'cheese' (I say 'cheese' because apparently in the States it does not need to be refrigerated) and some washcloths.  The Velveeta was $11 for two 2lb packages.  Up here you would pay probably $10 for one package.  So we decided to bring some back. 

I had read about another outlet mall south of Seattle called Supermall.  It sounded like it had a few good store options, so we headed down there.  It was straight down the 405 to Auburn, WA, and the traffic wasn't too bad on a Sunday morning.  We got there and started looking around and came to the conclusion that mall was not 'super' at all.  It was under a lot of construction and didn't have as many stores as I thought it might.  The food court consisted of four choices, none of which felt too appealing, but we made do.  I ended up getting a pair of jeans, and Jay got a shirt and some new sunglasses at the not-so-Supermall.  When we were done, we checked out a nearby Walmart.  It was neat to see some different things, that we can't get up here.

 (Trying on a coat, that I didn't end up buying, at Burlington Coat Factory.  I remember seeing the cheesy ads on daytime TV.  I wasn't sure what to expect, it felt a lot like a bigger version of Winners.)

 

 (Walmart in the States, still sells fabric!)

We weren't sure what to do for supper.  Since it was still early, and we didn't see any places near Walmart that we were interested in, so we decided to head to the hotel to figure out a place to go for supper (it would have been so nice to have data access, or even a few more free wi-fi spots in the States!).  I got on Urbanspoon and looked for restaurants near our hotel.  I found one that was a highly rated Mexican place that was not more than about a 10 minute drive from our hotel.  We had a short wait, but it was worth it.  We really enjoyed our supper at Cactus, and I would certainly eat there again if we were in the area.  I had a humungous beef burrito, and Jay enjoyed some enchiladas.  When we were done eating, and already stuffed, the manager came over with free dessert because he had heard that it was our first visit to the restaurant.  We managed to cram some free dessert into our full tummies, and called it a night.

 (Waiting outside, on a quaint little street, in the rain/drizzle, for a table to free up.)

 (Neat decor, with dried peppers hanging from the ceiling.  Also, they brought chips and the most delicious, fresh salsa as we waited for our food, mmm)

 (My humungous burrito.  It was so tasty!  It must have been at least 14 inches long!)

(Jay's seafood enchiladas with beans and rice)

 

  (We drove along Lake Washington on the way back to our hotel after supper.)