Our Weekend in Seattle

We just returned from a wonderful vacation to Seattle, Alaska, and British Columbia.  It was truthfully the trip of a lifetime, and we are so happy that we were able to have this experience.  I never want to forget any part of our trip, so I've decided to do a recap of our vacation highlights, starting with our first stop:  Seattle, Washington. 

We arrived in Seattle, at around 11:45 AM, which was more like 2:45 PM eastern time, making us already pretty tired – considering that we left home at 4:45 AM to be at the airport.   But we were all so ready to start our vacation that our excitement quickly overtook our exhaustion.  After dropping off our luggage at our hotel, we ventured into downtown Seattle.  We enjoyed a quick lunch at the Potbelly Sandwich Shop and then headed over to Ride the Ducks!  for a quick Duck Tour of Seattle.

Ducks in a Row

Another Duck in Lake Union

Our tour guide, or Captain, was an interesting guy, calling himself “Captain Beaux-dacious.”  While the tour was pretty silly and tourist-y, we did see some great sights around the city, including our first view of the Space Needle, several downtown highlights, and a beautiful ride along Lake Union where we got a glimpse of some of the boats from Deadliest Catch, as well as a view of the Sleepless in Seattle floating house. 

The blue house is where Sleepless in Seattle was filmed

 After our Duck Tour, we headed back into downtown, utilizing the Seattle Monorail.  The ride as short, lasting only 2 minutes, but at least we can say we have been on the Monorail.  We immediately headed to Pike’s Market, which quickly became one of my favorite parts of Seattle.  The market completely overwhelms your senses:  the noise of the city, the smells of fresh produce, flowers, and seafood, and the sights of the diverse people and vendors, gorgeous bouquets and crates of fruits and veggies is really amazing.  We could have spent hours just wandering through the many areas of the market.

Pike Place Market

Gorgeous flowers everywhere you looked.

Fresh "see"food

Sunflowers = my favorite!

Just an example of the beautiful produce for sell

After doing a great deal of exploring, we had worked up an appetite, so we headed to Lowell’s for a seafood dinner.   The food was pretty good, but the menu was quite small, which surprised us.  After dinner, we were pretty exhausted, considering it was 8 pm in Seattle, but 11 pm eastern time.  We were feeling the jet lag, so we decided to head back to our hotel.  Lo and behold, on our walk back, we saw a Target in the middle of Seattle’s downtown area.  And Mom and I were all over it like white on rice!  Poor Dad and Lee were patient and let us browse for a few minutes. 

After a much needed restful night, we were wide awake at 5:30 am (8:30 eastern time)  - the time change was really throwing us for a loop.  We decided to go ahead and get ready for the day.   After a decent breakfast at the Hurricane Café, we went to go enjoy the gorgeous day from the top of the Space Needle.  It was a really clear day, so we got some great views of the city, as well as Mt. Rainier.  

Looking up at the Space Needle

At the top

Mt. Rainier

Green Screen Photo Op

We spent the rest of our afternoon at Pike’s Market, doing some more exploring.  We found a great local artist and bought some pretty (and cheap) artwork.   After some souvenir shopping, we walked over to Pike Place Chowder to try their award winning chowder for lunch.  It was honestly the most delicious chowder that I have ever eaten, and it was definitely worth the 30 minute wait in line just to order. 

CHOWDER!

We finished up our afternoon by walking down to Pioneer Square for Bill Speidel’s Underground Tour which leads you beneath the city streets to see the original Seattle streets.  It was an interesting tour and we learned a lot about the more colorful history of the late 19^th century town.   We decided to walk over to the waterfront after our tour to enjoy dinner at Anthony’s Pier 66.  The seafood there was delicious.  After dinner, we headed back to our hotel to get ready for our cruise the next day. 

We woke up really early on our last morning in Seattle.  We headed back down to the market and visited Le Panier to get a taste of their pastries for breakfast.  

This is called a Chocolatine, a chocolate croissant with almond cream and it is like heaven in your mouth.

We wandered back toward the fish counter, and the guys let Lee go behind the counter to try his hand at catching a fish.  Before I knew it, they were throwing a HUGE fish toward my husband.  He caught it like a pro!  It was one of his favorite moments in Seattle.  

After a thorough hand washing (or three), we walked down to see the Market Theater gum wall.  Seattle has a lot of pretty funky public art, and this is just one example of that.   The gum wall is literally a wall that citizens and tourists have been putting their gum on since 1993.  Now there are several feet of nothing but gum, placed on the wall to spell words, make pictures, etc. 

We joined in on the fun, using our four pieces of gum to make a smiley face, so if you ever go to Seattle, look for this guy on the gum wall:

Finally it was time to board our cruise ship and set sail for Alaska.  We boarded the Norwegian Pearl at noon and spent the afternoon acclimating ourselves to the cruise ship.  We could hardly wait for our upcoming trip to Alaska!

Our ship docked in the Port

If you’d like to hear about the rest of our trip, check back later as I update with details of our visits to Juneau, Skagway, Glacier Bay, Ketchikan, and Victoria, British Columbia. 

Thanks for reading!
- Gina