Sightseeing Seattle

We started off the day with fabulous homeade cottage cheese blueberry pancakes - ala Bob. This is his specialty and even though it happened to be father's day, he insisted on taking over the cooking duties. We were all very impressed by the yummy pancakes and ate until we were stuffed. We also had fresh carrot/fruit juice and cherries once again. Can't get enough of those cherries!

Promptly at 9:30 am my friend Nicholle Omiste (formerly Shaffer) from St. Olaf picked us up to take us on a walking tour of Seattle. She works on Bainbridge Island which is a ferry ride across the bay, so she is very familiar with all the streets and local attractions downtown. We began our trip by taking the monorail over to the Space Needle and walking around the park there, seeing all the cool buildings, fountains, strange street people selling things, and funny sculptures. Unfortunately, many of the outdoor attractions were closed because it was only 50 degrees, but it was fun to imagine what they would have looked like in hot weather with millions of kids running around them. We saw the strange music center which was a gigantic sculpture of a building in all different colors that made no sense to me, but Nicolle explained that it was commissioned by one of the owners of Microsoft and that he made it becuase "he needed to get a girlfriend and wanted to impress her". ha ha! Ohhh...... that makes sooo much more sense now. ;) It actually looked quite interesting, but I wasn't about to pay $15 to find out about the disco lounge and tribute to Jimmy Hendrix guitars. Well, not yet anyway..... ;)

We continued our hike around the historical downtown into Pioneer Square and eventually to Pike's Market. This was one of the other highlights of the trip. We loved the colors, the smells and the sounds of this busy market with all it's fresh fruit and veggie stands, bakeries and crafts. I told Alfredo I could live there! We saw some guys throwing fish, but it wasn't a busy day and mostly people were standing around holding cameras up waiting for a good photo and no one was buying anything. Hence, no fish being thrown (come on people!). We sampled some of the fresh white peaches which were to die for!! We also bought some Ranier cherries (the yellow ones) and figs, and for lunch we munched on fresh hot gyros. Again, excellent eating!

After stuffing ourselves, we continued our trek down Pioneer Square to Ye Olde Curiosity Shop where they have supposed dead bodies and heads of Guatemalen indians in glass cases and other crazy morbid things. It's all very hokey, but good fun for an old fashioned scare! We didn't take home any bones, but we did find some good postcards. :) We also walked through the Washington Ferry terminal and saw where Nicholle takes her 45 minute ride every day on the way to work.

We capped off the day by taking a 90 minute walking tour of the Underground of the city. Seattle was orginally a town that was built all in wooden structures on the edge of a sand dune. It a giant tinderbox waiting to ignite. One day a kid who was melting glue in a factory forgot to attend to the fire and it exploded into a giant grease fire that burnt down the whole city. Oops! I'm pretty sure he lost his job. Luckily no one was hurt, but they decided to take this opportunity to start over and they did something totally radical. They built directly on top of the remains of the old city and raised everything up between 15 - 30 feet. Everything was built in stone and eventually the streets were filled in to rise up to the height of the new buildings. As bizarre as this sounds, it was actually quite interesting because it left a hollow city underneath where bootleggers hid their booze during the prohibition, and banks hid their gold during the gold rush, etc. We were able to walk all over under the city and see what used to be there! It felt like we were in some secret underground society.

We hopped back in the car, said goodbye to Nicholle and spent our last few hours hanging out with the Rosains. Their daughter Becky, her husband Scott and their 17 month old daughter, Alice were visiting and that provided a whole other element of fun. Alice was at walking stage now so she could run around everywhere.... the stairs were her favorite. She was also very organized, so her favorite thing to do was put all the magnets on the refrigerator in order. I have a feeling she's going to be Secretary of State someday. Or perhaps the next Martha Stewart! ha ha

We also had a fun and unique opportunity to see some old family movies that Bob's dad had taken on his 9 millimeter movie camera (the old fashioned kind). We saw movies of my grandparents at Christmas, my parents and relatives growing up and even my mom and dad's wedding!!! Not many people get to see live footage of their parents before they were born! :) Bob also had a video from 1991 which was the last time we saw them at a family reunion, so of course there were embarrassing shots of me in my fuschia shirt tied in a knot in front, 80's style, and bright blue shorts. Those were not the best fashion years for me...... One funny thing I noticed, my mom looks exactly the same! Same haircut, same clothes, same everything. It's like she hasn't aged in 16 years! Amazing!

After many fun hours of movies and reminiscing, we had to say goodbye to Bob and Jody and move on to our next destination which was a BBQ at George and Mariah's house in Lynnwood, about 30 minutes away. Again, we were fed to the gills with wonderful homemade food: steak, organic tossed salad with feta cheese (my favorite!), and fresh strawberry shortcake for dessert! Yummmm....... We had a great time catching up and telling funny stories. It was nice to get to know Mariah's husband George since we haven't hung out with him before. We grilled him all about what it's like being a high school physics teacher and mountaineering man. Mariah and George are both avid outdoorsy people, which was apparent from all the adventure magazines around their house and all their photos taken atop big mountains. They are perfectly located in Seattle to take advantage of the outdoors scene. It's almost enough to convince us we need to move here! ;) Sounds like lots of fun!