Seattle Anniversary

Raised toilet room / Underground Tour

Hubby and I spent the weekend of our fourth anniversary in Seattle! I was afraid we would get rained on the entire time but the weather cooperated for us while we were there! It rained pretty heavily on our way up on Friday and into Friday night but by Saturday morning it was bright and sunny!! We actually were over dressed and ended up carrying our jackets for the rest of the day! Our dinner on Friday night was the perfect way to kick off the weekend - sushi and sake! We went to a place called Ototo Sushi and it was by far the best sushi I have ever had! If you're ever in Seattle I strongly suggest going there!
On Saturday we started off our morning at Starbucks (not the Original Starbucks though) and then headed over to Bill Speidel's Underground Tour at Pioneer Square. Craig and I both loved this tour - we were hoping it was a but more "underground" but it was neat to hear about how Seattle was rebuilt after a fire that destroyed the whole city and the plans to raise the city from constant flooding and save it's history! This was by far our favorite part of the trip. After the tour we were hungry! A few of our friends told us about The Crab Pot so we went there for lunch - we got "The Westport" which consisted of dungeness crab, snow crab, shrimp, steamed clams & pacific mussels, andouille sausage, red potatoes and corn on the cob all steamed in a pot and then dumped on your table with two mallets! It was definitely a FUN lunch and was really tasty! 

Another thing a few friends suggested to us was the Ride the Duck tour of Seattle. It's basically a drive around the city to certain points of interest and then the vehicle drives right into Union Bay and makes a circle around the bay. Craig and I were a bit disappointed on this tour - they have you make a bunch of noise and bounce around like you're having the time of your life all while just driving around the city. Basically a crash course to orient you on where everything is - at $25 each for the 90 minute tour we didn't think it was worth it. Kind of a bummer. I did enjoy the time out in the water - we got to see the house that was used in Sleepless in Seattle (from about 2 football fields away) and I was able to get a decent picture of the city but overall I would never suggest it or do it again - not for that price, plus the noise making and quacking got a bit annoying.

 I think the duck tour was exhausting for Craig so we went back to the hotel and he took a nap while I read a tour book, we then met up with our friend Kim (who happened to be in Seattle for other reasons) and got dinner and drinks at Brouwer's (brew pub).

City view from the top of our hotel

Sunday morning we took the bus down to Pioneer Square to check out the big public market. I had been reading in the tour books to "go early" as it tended to get very crowded....so we got there about 9am and nothing was open yet. Most of the farmers were still setting up their booths and all of the specialty shops still had their doors closed. We didn't want to wait around for 10am so we headed down to the waterfront and walked along the pier down to the Seattle Aquarium. I had read about the aquarium and thought it'd be a much larger place than it was but all in all it was a worth while experience - I now want a pet otter or two (so cute!). After the aquarium we meandered down the pier some more and grabbed a late breakfast at one of the shops before hopping on the bus over to the Experience Music Project and Sci-Fi museum. Both EMP and the Sci-Fi museum are housed in a beautiful Frank Gehry building - if you don't know who he is, look him up. I absolutely love his architecture and it is so recognizably his. I think I took more pictures of this one building than I did of our entire trip to Seattle (even the space needle)!

Anyways - we slowly walked around looking at old guitars and music memorabilia (I took a few pictures of some old Fender guitars for my Dad, too) then headed to the Sci-Fi portion where we got lost in nerd-dom. We wandered around the Seattle Center a bit and snapped a few more pictures of the space needle (which we did not go up, $18 each to take an elevator? no thanks) and then headed back to our hotel to pickup the car and drive over to Fremont to check out the Fremont Troll before heading home.

We had a great time in Seattle and I would love to go back someday! I can't believe we've been married for four years! Crazy how times flies and all that we have done so far! Can't wait for whats next (whatever that may be)!!

Hoyt Arboretum

Craig and I have been wanting to find nice places to go hiking on quick weekend trips, not too long and not too short and with not too much skill involved. By the suggestion from a friend we were pointed toward the Hoyt Arboretum, which is near the Oregon Zoo and Childrens Museum. Actually, it's near quite a few places of interest: Pittock Mansion, Rose Gardens, Japanese Gardens etc... With the area being 321 acres, you can imagine how many things are "nearby!" On Sunday we took the dogs there and just wandered around, checking out all of the various trees - we ended up walking roughly five miles over the course of about three hours. About half way through our time there Bender was pooped, Craig was actually dragging him at times while Ginger maintained her ball of energy personality the entire time. It was a nice way to spend part of our day and the dogs sure enjoyed the outing! We will definitely be back there again - we hardly made a dent on the trails and I would love to see what the place looks like in the Fall after the leaves have changed!

Enjoy the pictures!

Taking a break.

Craig and the pups.

View toward the City.

Happy hiking family in Portland!

Hello Portland!

This weekend Craig and I decided to venture out and see a lot of the touristy places around Portland. We had been meaning to go check out all of these places earlier but with unpacking, errands, camping trips and barbecues filling up the majority of our weekends we never got around to it (but we made some new friends instead). We also wanted to make sure we still had the sunny summer weather in our favor! We started off today with a self-guided walking tour of Portland - from China Town to Old Town, from The Waterfront Park to The Pearl District and all over! We used the Frommer's Portable Portland guide book that we got from Craig's Mom which gave us a starting point, walking directions from place to place and then an ending point.

We started at the Lan Su Chinese Garden which is the largest classical Suzhou-style Chinese garden outside of china. I have no idea what Suzhou-style means but here are some pretty pictures:

 

 

Told we could get a foot massage if we walked barefoot - kinda hurt.

Here's hoping that opportunity is a JOB! :-)

When we were done strolling through the garden and it's gift shop (naturally) we walked down a few blocks and ran into hordes of people at the Portland Saturday Market which is held every Saturday and Sunday in the same place: Waterfront Park. It's basically your typical swap-meet style shopping under pop-up shade with craft vendors, food vendors, clothing vendors etc. with the main difference being several street performers. We made our way through the crowds and didn't really stop to shop - I am sure I'll be back there one day when it isn't a holiday weekend! We're not big on crowds that don't pay attention to where they are going. Neat thing about it though was that everywhere you looked, someone was walking their dog, riding a bike, or carrying around their boa constrictors (we saw a family of four in which three members had a snake around their neck - they were stopped at a booth to get lunch).  We also stumbled upon this guy (right), who wasn't too musical - he basically stood there and strummed the guitar with his one modified arm and occasionally blew in the harmonica - he's the only street performer we gave any money to (basically cause we thought he was pretty cool with his one arm). After we made our way through the market, we strolled along the Waterfront Park, passed up the Oregon Maritime Center & Museum (it looked abandoned so we decided to save ourselves the time and money of going in) and went on our way to find Mill Ends City Park (click the link and read about it, it's quite funny and interesting):

See it? It's riiiiight - there!

Ok, ok...here is me, just outside of Mill Ends Park (seriously).

We then stopped and grabbed lunch at Thirsty Lion Pub where quite a few college football games were being aired (of which us non-sports people were not really into). The atmosphere was loud, but it was still nice. We then made our way over to Pioneer Place and The Pioneer Courthouse Square - both just cool places to know where they are but nothing really too interesting. Pioneer Place is just a big mall and the Square is a place that hosts lots of conventions, free concerts and protest rallies. One cool thing about the Square is that it's all brick - just one of those neat architectural things I enjoy. We then took the free-rail over to Couch Street (pronounced Cooch - thought you should know) and checked out Powell's City of Books - you could get lost in this bookstore. They give you a map at the front that is color coded for each section of the store (crafts, technical, cooking, homemaking, fiction etc...). They also have entire buildings devoted to certain types of books, for example: the Home & Garden building is down one city block and around the corner. By this point in our day trip we were starting to get tired so we headed over to Pete's Tea & Coffee two blocks one way and three blocks another (we didn't realize that they had a location within Powell Books -oops).

While we were enjoying our drinks we saw this across the street (left). Yes, ladies that is a male model in underwear in front of the Under 4Men store. People were stopping to take pictures next to this guy who stayed in his statuesque form until the pictures were done and then seemed to be embarrassed once the people walked away. Our view was quickly taken over by four gay men who decided to sit in the window facing this fellow - giggling, of course!  The drinks we got at Pete's were nice and refreshing but did nothing to wake us up any - so we skipped over a few of the Museums & Galleries listed in the walking-guide and went straight over to Jamison Park - a good place to take your kids and let them run around in the water while you read a book and enjoy your coffee (not applicable to us, of course). Across the street from there was a neat wall that bordered (hid) a parking lot, I had seen this wall before and have wanted to snap some pictures of it so I was glad to have been passing by the area.

  

We then made our way over two blocks to Tanner Springs Park which would have been the perfect place to plop down a blanket and read a book from Powell's (had we bought one). I strongly suggest you read up about the park as it's too lengthy to add here but I thought it was a quiet and peaceful place and I enjoyed it's purpose and overall design. 

 

All in all, we had a pretty enjoyable day!