Seattle, WA

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And then we were in Seattle, where “hip” has much more to do with your electronic accessories than your outfit. In a city where odds are 2:1 that you’ll be rained on any given day, and probably 3:1 for cloud cover, we were incredibly lucky to be graced with a beautiful, clear day.

We drove in from our navy base lodings (which were absolutely fantastic, especially for under $30 a night) and went directly to Pike Place market. (And I use the term “directly” fairly loosely here, as we navigated horrendous traffic and parking for almost an hour before finding someplace to keep the car.) We checked out the famous fish-throwers, which are clearly throwing more for the benefits of the tourists than for our own fun nowadys, and scanned some of the offerings. I couldn’t get over the huge, inexpensive bouquests of flowers throughout the market! If I lived in Seattle my apartment would be restocked with fresh flowers weekly!

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We ate our way through many of the must see sites and vendors, including an iced latte from the ORIGINAL Starbucks! (I was quite excited about that -- through let’s not tell my future Dunkin Donut devotee friends in Boston!) After some of the “best mac and cheese in the World,” fresh corn, and other delicacies, we walked around downtwon to check out the cool architecture of the public library and the downtown shopping offerings.

After a few hours we got back in the car for a trip to the Space Needle’s observation deck. Very cool views of the city. Of course no one could take a decent picture of us with the city in the background, and we started thinking about the picture we’d realy like: the skyline with the city included. As we looked around at our location options for achieving such a picture, the Queen Ann hill to the North was the obvious choice. Driving up the hill half an hour, however, we discovered that finding a view of the city was not as easy as one might suppose. Wherever there was a nice view to be had, someone had built a giant house (with I’m sure plenty of windows and balconies to enjoy it themselves) that blocked the whole thing! After searching for a while, I was getting ready to climb on a stranger’s rooftop or fence to get the picture that I kept glimpsing through the strucktures. Suddenly, I noticed that an apartment building we were driving past had a fire escape going up the side. I thought if only we could get to those stairs…so we parked and checked it out, but the entrance to the stairs was completely sealed off. Looking around, we realized that the building was a returement home, and decided to just go inside and basically ask nicely to be let out onto the stairs. When we begged the very nice receptionist to help us get the picture we’d been looking for, she actually offered us the opportunity to go up to the building’s rooftop garden with a full view of the city! One up there, we stacked chairs on top of each other and wrapped our bendable camera tripod around their legs. To make it even more difficult, one of the limbs of our bendable tripod broke off, so that we had to wrap two legs in a bit of a crazy way to get it right. It was worth all the heroic measures though: As we looked at the skyline, we noticed with astonishment that Mt. Rainer had emerged from the one remaining cloud in the sky and was staring at us over the right shoulder of the skyline. Just gorgeous!! We suddenly understood the coloqueal saying of “The Mountain’s Out” that Seattle residents use to declare good weather. It was amazing!

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We ultimately got the perfect picture, and we wish that delightful rececptionist nothing but good things!

After our photograph exploits, we checked out the northeast area, which was packed with stereotypical hip and dramatic youth that Seattle is known for. We dined at Ristorante Machiavelli, which was unassuming and completely delicous, I had the gnocci, which supposedly is widely acknowledged as the best in town. All in all a great day.

The next day was miserable and rainy, but it was okay because we spent it at the premium outlet malls just a few miles from our navy base hotel picking up Jcrew t-shirts for $3 each. My goodness outlet malls are fabulous. I can’t imagine why I ever shopped anywhere else!!

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And then it was time to head down the coast. Mt. St. Helen’s, here we come!