Travel Blog: Seattle

It took us a little while to take our first trip together but Nancy and I finally did and it was amazing. In July, we decided to plan a trip to Seattle to visit her bro and because Nancy is a huge Philadelphia Eagles fan, we planned our trip around their NFL schedule. So we figured, as long as we're going to Seattle, we might as well go when the Seattle Seahawks are playing the Eagles and see the game while we're there. So we planned our trip 4 months in advance but it did work in our benefit because we were able to get an early discount on the hotel and get an upgrade for a pretty decent price. (It's important to note that we couldn't buy game tickets before we got to Seattle because it was sold out and the prices were ridiculous)

So we landed in Seattle at 10am on Friday (Halloween) and her brother and his wife picked us up. We decided to stop at the hotel and drop off our stuff then go for a bite to eat.

So you never know when you book a hotel, if you're gonna be happy with it. Imagine our surprise when we saw our room...and the view:

Bedroom:


Bathroom:


The room was insane, it was a corner room with a massive window with a view of downtown. We were so excited. But it was time to leave the room and go check out the city. The first stop was Capital Hill, the gay part of town, where her bro took us to get some great pizza at Pagliacci. So we stuffed ourselves then we headed to Volunteer Park to check out the water tower, Japanese garden, and the arboretum



and her brother showed me a feature on my camera that entertained me for hours


I couldn't get over the colors of the trees and how beautiful everything was. No wonder people are always saying we don't have seasons in LA...



We then took a ride on the Ducks. What are the Ducks you ask? Well, it's an Amphibious World War II vehicles that looks like this



And after the land tour, you go into the water



And in true Seattle spirit, once we got in the water, the weather had cleared up and we were able to get an amazing view of the skyline



The tour guide was insane but a blast. He was playing loud music and we were singing along. Since it was Halloween we had a group of 7 witches on the tour with us who were all drunk and hilarious. It's definitely the most fun tour I've ever been on.

We then headed up to the Space Needle just in time for the sunset


It was then time to say good night to Scott and Tatiana and head to dinner at a place called Icon, which is known for having some of the best comfort food in the city. We started with an artichoke gruyere dip and then I had the meatloaf and mashed potatoes and Nancy had the 5 cheese mac and cheese. After that, on my boss's suggestion, we went over to a restaurant called Flying Fish for dessert. She recommended the banana split platter, which is seriously a platter. Fortunately the short walk there helped us make a little room. I ate a little bit of it but Nancy who is not at all into banana splits was the one licking the plate.

Then it was time to call it a night and head back to our hotel. Spent a little time online trying find tickets to the game to no avail.
Enjoyed the view a little more



The next morning, we woke up and walked over to another one of my boss's suggestions, a bakery called Macrina. After about an hour wait (well worth it), we sat down for breakfast. I got the brioche french toast and Nancy got the fried egg sandwich. Oh. My. God. So good.

We decided to spend the rest of the day walking around the city. First we headed to Pike's Market where there's the famous fish market where they throw the fish. We stood next to about 35 people who were all just waiting for someone to order fish so they could see it get thrown.



It started to get rainy so after walking around, we thought it would be a good time to go on the underground tour. Seattle, because of its steep hills, (and I'm sure I'm butchering history here) had a lot of issues with flooding every time the tide came in. So in the 1800s, the city was constantly flooded. They had a major fire in 1889 and the city decided it would be the perfect time to rebuild the city properly so that it didn't flood anymore. But the store owners didn't want to wait for the city to get its act together. So while the city built the sidewalks and some new buildings 10-12 feet above sea level, the store owners decided to just rebuild at sea level. So they just had ladders to get them from the lower stores to the higher sidewalks. Well that became a mess, mostly because drunk people would fall off the sidewalks or trucks would hit potholes and cause barrels to plummet down and injure and kill people. So the store owners finally agreed to let the city finish the job...and so the Seattle underground was born.





Then we grabbed a quick bite to eat...I finally introduced Nancy to Pho! So now we wanted to go see the mother ship...that's right, REI's flagship store with the tallest free standing rock wall in the west at 65 feet tall. We headed over there thinking we could just walk right up and be able to climb but apparently they get booked up so we had to make an appointment for the next morning.

Scott and Tatianna had invited us over for dinner so a short walk up the hill and we were at their place. She made a great beet salad, some awesome pea soup, and a beet quiche was was amazing. And then we had some pear tart for dessert.
Nancy was getting stressed out that we still didn't have tickets to the game so we spent a lot of time hitting refresh on craiglist and ebay to see if we could find some decent tickets. Uh oh.
We played Cranium Turbo which was so hard that after 1 hour, we had moved two spaces and Scott and Tatianna had moved 3. So we gave up.

We took a late stroll back to the hotel, spent some more time on the internet looking for tickets and still couldn't find any. I was hoping by the morning, desperate sellers would lower their prices and we'd be good to go.

We woke up early for our rock climb, thanks to the extra hour of sleep from day light savings and I found a couple promising posts on craigslist for tickets. I emailed them and sat by the phone waiting for a call. Finally, someone called me back, he had 2 50 yard line tickets on the visitors side for $50 each...which was a great deal. So I went on paypal and transferred the money and was all set. Well, that sounded too easy...because of my address change, the transfer wouldn't clear so we were back to square one.

We headed to the rock wall and figured it would all somehow work out. When Nancy remembered her bro could do the paypal transfer. Yay!!! We finally had the tickets!!! Scott also decided to get tickets on the Seahawks side, which was great because we were exactly across from each other.

And we could enjoy our relaxing 65 foot rock climb. Ahhhh!



But we both made it to the top!



It was finally time to head to the game, so after a quick bite at Whole Foods, we got to the game where it started raining...we had covered seats! The first quarter was looking bad, with the Seahawks having a 7 to 0 lead. But after that the Eagles came back with a vengeance and won the game 26 to 7 and Nancy couldn't have been more excited.

Well it was time to say goodbye to Seattle so we went and got our bags and headed to the airport for our flight out.

It was an amazing trip and we had a blast, I can't wait to go back!