Up to the Market

For those of you who have not been to Seattle, the city is built on some very large hills, actually cliffs. To get to the Pike Place Market from the water you have to go up about a million steps. I might be exaggerating a bit, but while you are in the process of climbing it feels like a million.

Once we arrived I showed Shannon where the first Starbucks was located and then we made our way over the main part of the market. The market was much busier then the previous time I was here, I have to imagine it was due to the fact it was a Saturday and many of the locals come here to get fresh produce, fish, flowers, etc. Here we each are with the “infamous” sign.

Then we were successful in taking a picture of the two of us by holding the camera out in front.
And an up-close one of the sign. We went over to the fish stand and watched them sell and throw some fish.
Then they handed this big fish to a boy in the crowd. Yuck, I hope he washed his hands after holding this.
We then went over the pepper stand. For some reason I just love how they put these displays together. This wreath was something new, I had not seen it in June. Very cool!
Then there are all the flowers. I absolutely love fresh flowers and they are all so amazing at the market. Here is some pretty statice Here is a nice fall bouquet
And these pretty pink stargazer lilies – I took these in honor of our cruise critic group – we were named the Stargazers.
Here are a row of flowers for $5 each! The flowers are so cheap here it is unbelievable. You would pay so much more for these anywhere else. We then moved onto the fresh fruit
- quick update on the this fruit picture, Shannon and I have both gone through these pictures several times, and it was only today, 10/14 that we noticed the huge lizard eating a peach. Hmm... not sure if it was take your pet to the market day or not.... And vegetables
Pasta anyone?
As we were leaving we saw this cute parking sign.
We then walked behind the market to the fun little park I had found in June to get some great sky line pictures. Here is Shan with the city behind her.
After we left the market we headed back to our hotel. Here is our room for the night - much bigger then our cabin for the week. We then headed up towards Kirkland to have dinner with my cousin, Betsy and Rob for dinner. I wanted to take Shannon across the floating bridges, which is one part of Seattle that I absolutely love and I am fascinated by.
Evidently Tampa has floating bridges, so Shan was not as impressed. We also took the tunnel under Mercer Island – Shannon was glad she was not driving. We had dinner in Kirkland, which has a fun downtown area. We went to an Irish Pub and had a great dinner! When we got back to my cousins house we saw the nursery which is awaiting the arrival of twin boys (they are scheduled to be born this Thursday, October 16th) It was great to be able to spend time with Betsy and Rob again, we had a great time both in July and September. I hope to be able to visit them again soon – I am sure they will welcome any help with the boys.

Space Needle and the Real World

We decided not to go up in the space needle. It was $16 a person and after talking to a couple of people who got off the elevator, we decided it was not worth it. Somehow we did lose each other in the gift shop though. It is a circular shop on the ground floor and we were both kept moving around the circle looking for each other. I finally had to call Shannon to find her. It was pretty funny.
We found this nice spot to take some pictures with the space needle.
We then left the Seattle Center and headed back down to Alaska Way, which is where the Real World House was. Here is a picture of the space needle as we drove away. As we were walking down the street we saw the Golden Princess leaving. The Golden is a sister ship to the one we were on. Here are some pictures as it sails away.
I admittedly did not watch the Real World Seattle season (I have only watch one season in my life), but Shannon was a big fan. Finding the house was high on her list of things to do in Seattle. The funny thing about it, is that when I was Seattle in June she was telling me she wanted to go while I was stopped at a railroad crossing directly in front of it, but had no idea that was it. The house was located at Pier 70 Evidently this is where some fight took place and somebody threw something into the ocean – guess you had to watch the show. The things about this location, is that after the show was over a new owner bought the place and had totally redone the whole thing. So it does not look anything like it did during the Real World and the house is gone. But the door was here.
Here is Shannon by the door.
Now there is a nice restaurant where you can go eat (or in our case walk around and take pictures of.) This is one of my favorite pictures. Over the course of the cruise Shannon and I took many pictures of the two of us by holding her camera out and taking the picture. This was our first attempt. As you can see we failed. I was standing to the right of Shannon. Many times during the cruise we would find this picture for a good laugh.

From the Real World house we headed towards the Pike Place Market. On the way we saw this road sign...

Seattle Center in September

I pulled into the parking lot of the hotel around 1:30 or 2:00 pm on Saturday, I can’t remember exactly what time it was. Seeing Shannon walk out of the door hotel made everything so real. Traveling so much this summer the beginning of this trip felt like every other trip, not like the start of a wonderful vacation. With Shan living in Orlando we only see each other about once a year and finally seeing her in person made the realization that our vacation was actually beginning. After a quick trip to Wendy’s, dropping off my luggage in our room for the night, and a changing into cooler clothes – it was around 80 degrees out - we jumped in the rental car to head into downtown Seattle.

I was pleasantly surprised how well I remembered the city and how to get around. This was Shannon’s first time in Seattle and she was excited to see the city. As we approached she took this picture from the car.
The first “landmark” we saw was Safeco Field.
We then traveled down Alaska Way and Shan saw Puget Sound for the first time. We decided to start our sightseeing at the Space Needle. Parking around that area was quite expensive and hard to find. A few blocks away we found some on street parking, but you had to back in on an angle. Normally I would not think too much of this, but being in a rental car, that I had only driven for a few hours, I was a little nervous. But I did really well. We are the little black car in the middle
We walked a few blocks to the space needle, which is surrounded by the Seattle Center which has sculptures, gardens, museums, and kid’s area. Here is the space needle as we approached it.
This is one of the sculptures – it is not a Calder – but it looks like one.
Shan and I both had our pictures taken by it. While we were there a little girl was using one of the tubes as a slide, I tried to take a picture, but she was bored at the point and went to play with something else. Evidently grass is not very nice in Florida, so Shannon as excited to walk on some real grass.
These are some of the pretty flowers
I found this mural and I liked it.
Shannon wanted to go play in the kid’s area, but she was too tall.
This is a lightning bolt sculpture – I liked this too.

On the road again

So much of this summer still seams so surreal, including the fact that I was in Seattle twice in less then three months. I have to say I really like Seattle – the area is beautiful, the people friendly, and during the 8 days I was there the weather was beautiful, warm and sunny, no rain!

Getting to Seattle was uneventful for me. For the 3rd time this summer I took the Grand Rapids to Denver flight, and for the third time the time was moved up to 8:30 am. Which meant I needed to be up and out of the house by 7:00 ugh – not ideal for the start of a vacation, but thankfully I was able to sleep most of the first flight. As we were approaching Denver I was looking out the window and notice a plane was stopped on the side of the road out near the runway. Approaching the plane were several emergency vehicles, obviously something was wrong. I found out later the plane was from Little Rock, and a tire blew during take off. Thankfully they were able to land without incident, but they had to sit there for a couple hours and several people missed their connecting flights, including a several couples who were on their way to Seattle to catch a cruise ship and were in danger of missing it, which is why I am glad I flew out a day early.

The second flight was also uneventful and as I approached Seattle I was able to get some great pictures of Mt Rainier. With all the time changes, I spent 8 hours traveling, but arrived in Seattle at 1 pm.

Shannon’s travels to Seattle were decidable more complicated and stressful. Originally Shannon was scheduled to fly from Orlando to Seattle on Saturday with a lay over in Huston. But with hurricane Ike quickly approaching, the Huston airport was to close at noon on Saturday. Shannon received this news on Wednesday and so her flights were moved to Friday. She was able to get into the hotel a night early and everything was set. So we thought. Thursday night Shannon received another phone call from the airline telling her that the Friday flights were now cancelled and she had two choices, take a flight that lands her in Seattle an hour after the ship left on Sunday or pay an additional $1000 for the final first class seat on Friday. Neither one was a valid option. So Thursday night, just hours before she was scheduled to leave Shannon was with out a plane ticket. Thankfully she found a flight on Air-Tran that got her into Seattle on Friday, but didn’t get her home until Monday. This worked out due to the fact that Shan’s roommate works for the Marriott chain and was able to get us rooms at the Courtyard by Marriott for $50 a night.

On Saturday Shannon hung around the hotel until I arrived, thankfully I landed early, quickly picked up the rental car and drove over to the hotel. Our adventure was about to begin….