Seattle Trip Report, Continued

So, we spent our first two days in Seattle seeing the sights of the city. Well, not all the sights. Honestly, we have seen a lot of cities and we prefer to be out in nature since we have to live in a city in real life, but we try to do some unique things when we find ourselves in a big city.

Join me on a recap of the first part of the trip.

Our first day in town we walked around the Pike Place Market in Seattle. Markets are commonplace in Europe, but perhaps not so large or well-visited in the U.S. “The Market” in Seattle attracts millions of visitors a year, and, unlike most European markets, consists of actual permanent buildings that house stalls and tables. “The Market” has been around for over a hundred years now, though it has been saved and revitalized by a grass-roots effort in the ‘60s.

Pike Place Market is a great place to go to get free food samples. The famous fish market where the merchants throw fish to each other resides here, and let me tell you, that fish counter draws a crowd. Unfortunately, we discovered no fish get thrown unless someone actually buys something, so you may be standing there amid the throng of tourists for quite some time waiting for an actual buyer to come along. We were too impatient to stand there very long. (And, truth be told, John hates seafood and wasn’t that thrilled to see it flying through the air anyway.)

Daily Dozen Doughnut Company is a great stand that sells mini-doughnuts: regular, powdered sugar, and cinnamon. We highly recommend the cinnamon variety. There’s a little stall with a bar counter and stools looking out the window next door where you can enjoy your doughnuts and people watch.

If you want coffee with your doughnuts - no fear. It’s everywhere in Seattle. In fact, the original Starbucks is in the Pike Place Market area, so we opted to go there for coffee (for me – John doesn’t drink coffee).

(For the record, I don’t care for Starbucks coffee so much. I know, I know. Some of you may truly be offended. It’s bitter coffee. I get a flavored latte of some sort to disguise the coffee flavor, though I really prefer good coffee unsweetened. Nowadays, the problem with that is I have to make my own good coffee. Sometimes it’s nice to have your coffee made for you. Wow, am I lazy! Actually, during certain times of the year, Starbucks has a pumpkin spice latte that I sometimes crave, so those Starbucks gift cards I get for Christmas really do come in handy!)

John picked up some hot chocolate from a local bakery vendor in “The Market” before we stopped in at Beecher’s Handmade Cheese. Here, you can get a lesson on how they make their cheese, and look at huge vats of dairy in various stages of the cheese-making process. That’s not really why we decided to stop by; we lived in the Netherlands for a year and a half and took at least three cheese factory tours during that time. If nothing else, we know how cheese and wooden shoes are made.

No, the real reason to go to Beecher’s is for the macaroni and cheese (thank you to John’s sister for clueing us in on this delicacy). It is maybe the best macaroni and cheese in the world. We split a small one, seeing as we had snacked on the airplane that morning, shared a bag of doughnuts, sampled other delectables in “The Market”, and had a coffee and a hot chocolate. Good stuff.

Another unique Seattle activity is taking the Underground Tour. The Seattle you see today is one level higher than it originally was. The first level of the city center is still, in fact, there, underneath the sidewalks and streets. Due to tide levels and sewage problems, the streets and sidewalks were eventually raised. The tour is funny, informative, and interesting. We highly recommend spending an hour and a half doing this.

We are quite accustomed to walking a lot on vacations, so we never used the public transportation. Within the touristy area of Seattle the buses are apparently free, but we always feel we’re wasting time waiting for the bus to come so we usually end up walking. We walked around the International District (ID – used to be Chinatown, but I guess that’s no longer politically correct). We walked along the waterfront. We walked around Pioneer Square and Belltown. We were exhausted what with the walking, the early morning flight, and the two hour time change.

So, we went to Noodle Ranch to sit down and eat an early dinner. This is a great Asian restaurant if you’re into that kind of cuisine. And we are.

Our hotel was about a 30-minute drive outside the city. (Yea for HOV lanes!)

The second day we got a little bit later start, but we still managed to drive into Seattle, find parking and briskly walk to Safeco Field, home of the Mariners, just in time to buy tickets and join the first stadium tour of the day. Since the Mariners weren’t in town the weekend we were there, we decided to do the next best thing and take a tour of the stadium. It was just us, a family of four, and a guy from New Zealand. It was pretty awesome to go into the press box, the visitor’s clubhouse, and onto the field. Though it was cold, thankfully the rain and snow did not start until later that day.

We spent an enjoyable afternoon at the Seattle Aquarium, mostly inside out of the cold. It’s a nice aquarium, and we were lucky enough to get to see the giant octopus move around…a lot! According to the staff members of the aquarium that was really unusual. When we were done it happened to be raining. On our walk back to the car, the rain started turning to snow.

We decided to go to Discovery Park anyway. It’s a huge park in Seattle with several miles of hiking trails. Again, our timing was perfect. We took a two or three mile hike through meadows and forest, down to the beach, then back through the forest and meadows, all with light rain at the most. The highlight was seeing two bald eagles in a magnolia tree. (Thank you to the single man hiking behind us for pointing them out to us; we’re sorry we were slightly concerned you might be stalking us out in the middle of the forest).

Just as we finished our hike and got in the car, it started snowing…hard. The snow continued all evening, so though the traffic was pretty horrific, the view from our warm car (yippee for heated seats) was beautiful. And it felt so good to crawl into a soft, warm bed at the end of the day.