Seattle Days 3-4
by Rebecca on 2010-09-30
Note: I didnʼt take nearly as many pictures of the last two days of our trip. Not quite as photogenic as the first two days, I guess.
On Wednesday, we went back to the Pike Place Market to eat some more of that clam chowder. Of course, I had to get it in a sourdough bread bowl.
Then we went to the waterfront and found more cool stuff, like artsy street lamps and a fancy fountain.
At 12 sharp, we got on a motorcoach that took us and about 90 senior citizens up to Lake Union where we took a 2-hour cruise of Lake Union, the locks, and Puget Sound. The cruise was great — we saw the Sleepless in Seattle houseboat but (a) that movie is like 20 years old, people! Move on! and (b) neither William nor I remember anything about the movie other than the end where they finally meet at the Empire State Building, which is not in Seattle, funny enough. I didnʼt take a picture.
We went through an honest to goodness lock and saved ourselves a trip to the Panama Canal. See, I got to touch the side of it!
And we sailed back to Seattle through Puget Sound and got to see the skyline on a beautiful sunny day. It would seem that the most important bit of this picture is the Seattle skyline, rather than my chin. The perils of self-photography!
The other thing that I want to say about the cruise is that the people watching was fascinating. The people next to us were Germans and kept consulting a pocket-sized notepad filled with, I can only guess, handwritten supplemental material about the sites we were seeing on the tour. We had hopes of being the youngest people on the boat, but were done for by another younger, better-dressed couple. I guess second youngest isnʼt bad, though.
And last, there was a gentleman touring alone (or perhaps his companions were too embarrassed to sit next to him) who insisted on making loud witty remarks to every other thing that the tour guide said. He also asked the Germans to use their binoculars to look at a building in the distance and tell him what it said. I donʼt think their English was all that great, but he kept on shouting at them and pointing insistently until they finally handed the binoculars over to him. To top his boorishness off, the bright sun started to get to him, and he found a business card, cut two little slits into it, and taped it over his eyes. Iʼm not sure where his sunglasses were, but perhaps he didnʼt have room in his pocket for the sunglasses since they were clearly filled with a large Scotch tape dispenser. This is what William thought about all this.
After the cruise, we explored an antique shop (skipping the display of vintage Playboys), got the worldʼs best hot chocolate from Starbucks, picked up two pieces of Tom Douglasʼ famous Triple Coconut Pie from the also famous Dahlia Bakery, and spent the evening in our hotel eating delicious Whole Foods takeout while watching Persuasion. (I found the recipe for that pie online, and you better believe that Iʼm making it soon.)
On Thursday, we rented a car to give us a chance to see more places outside of Seattle. Yay, a day trip within a vacation! Our waitress at the Space Needle had recommended taking a scenic drive along Highway 2 into the mountains and through the forests. Our final destination was Leavenworth, which is a former logging town that turned itself into a Bavarian village in the 1960ʼs. Seriously! So, armed with our GPS and plagued the entire way by the famous gray skies and steady rainfall that Washington is famous for, we headed out. We finally found ourselves in Leavenworth, after two hours of this.
We had lunch at this restaurant. I had fish and chips, and William had bratwurst with sauerkraut.
We spent some time walking around the tourist shops there but didnʼt buy anything. They had a few kitschy shops, like a nutcracker store and a store that sells John Wayne toilet paper (itʼs rough, tough, and doesnʼt take crap off of anyone), and a funny hat store. It struck me as the kind of place that my German-heritage hometown of New Braunfels heartily wishes that it could be.
We drove back to Seattle along a different route so that we could go see Snoqualmie Falls. We found them right where GPS said they would be and got rather wet taking these pictures. Also, it was there that I sat on the coldest toilet seat in the world. Whoever thought up metal toilets had a dark sense of humor indeed.
From there, we drove to Bellevue to see the Seattle Temple and participate in the work there. I donʼt have any pictures of that because we were hurrying to get there by 6:00 and it was like 5:57 when we pulled up. But it looks just like this picture, I promise.
We had a nice evening in the temple and even met a lady whose daughter lives in Pflugerville, just down the road from us.
Then we went back to our hotel, changed into walking shoes, and headed to Whole Foods one last time to get pizza for supper. We also saw two women that were probably members of the worldʼs oldest profession. Er. And then we ran back to the hotel in a sudden rainstorm and suddenly felt like Seattle-ites.
Bonus: on Friday, we flew home, and Mom, Emily, and Grandmother picked us up at the airport. On our drive home, we saw a double rainbow, and you get a star if you know why William thought that was extra cool.