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)!!