First Trip to Seattle

I'm a little slow on this post, since I have so much to recap! But...we went to Seattle on business back at the end of May.  It was my first time to Seattle, ever!  Zach didn't lose his wallet, so that made our flight go more smoothly this trip.

Funny bit about that...so Arin rode up with us so she could drive our car back to Lehi. That way we wouldn't have to pay to park it for the week.  Zach got out of the car to get our bags out of the trunk. I said to Arin, "Watch, his wallet is right here in this open center console, he'll think he forgot it, but really it will be in my purse." We both started laughing as I put the wallet in my purse because of the "honeymoon mishap" when he lost his wallet in the SL airport before we even flew out.  So Zach goes to grab the handles on the bags and then looks me straight in the eyes as he is patting his pockets (realizing he doesn't have his wallet and will need ID to get through security). Arin is starting to pull away, and Zach starts pounding on the trunk for her to stop. I start laughing as she rolls down the windows and says something about forgetting his wallet. At this point, Arin and I are having a good laugh and I explained everything to Zach. He didn't think it was too funny, but I think he was pretty thankful I had remembered the wallet for him.  He would have NEVER lived it down if he'd forgotten the wallet after losing it on our honeymoon.

Brent and Jan picked us up in Seattle and we went with Kerry and Lawana to dinner at a steakhouse that was like Texas Roadhouse. I can't remember what it was called though. It will come to me...I'll update that later if I remember!  The next two days we just hung out at the auction house, saw a movie, went to the fur fashion show, ate at Anthony's...really fun! 

Us taking a picture with the models after the fashion show. The buyers kept making us stand up there because they all wanted pictures of us with the models. It was super awkward to have all the buyers taking pictures of us!

Brent and Jan and Kerry and Lawana left Thursday morning, and we picked up our rental car.

Chevy Cruze! Like what I was going to get, but bought my VW Jetta instead.

We went back to the hotel and had an omelette with our complimentary breakfast tickets at the Mariott. Then we took some well needed naps. After we woke up, we got ready and went driving around to some neat places. Our first stop was the Seattle Temple (which is actually in Bellevue and not Seattle).

The temple grounds had all these beautiful little trails with benches in there to ponder. It was landscaped so beautifully on the entire grounds. I told Zach, "In Utah, we can't landscape like this because all the ground is used for parking. Here, they can use it to beautify since there aren't very many members." So, in some ways, those outside of Utah are lucky because the grounds are full of foliage and gorgeous flowers.

After the temple, we went to a place that Kate Flowers (Ty used to work with her at SUU) suggested for us to visit. She moved to Seattle a few years ago and gave us sooo many good ideas to visit and places to eat at. It was called Gas Works Park (or something close to that).  It was an old gas place, and they left some of the old equipment and made a park out of it. It has a really neat view of downtown Seattle from the park.  You can walk down and sit on benches cut out of the concrete wall above, and the water hits into the concrete in from of the sidewalk and railing about 3 feet in front of you (think "dam-like"). I have so many pictures from the trip so I'm trying to only post the best ones here and I'll put the rest in an album.

We had reservations at Salty's that night, and so we had some time to kill. It didn't take us as long as we expected to visit the temple and the park. So after the park, we found a Catholic Cathedral online and drove to check it out.

The window above Zach says "I am the vine, you are the branches." Kind of a cool statement!

There was a free art museum across the street, so we decided to go in and check it out. Afterall, we were parked right in front of it. We went in and there was literally 10 pieces of art on the walls in the whole joint. Some were really pretty and others were very umm...interesting.




Finally, we decided to journey over toward the side of the city that Salty's on Alki is on and we drove around some neighborhoods up there. We had fun driving around seeing all the homes and how different they are than the Utah style homes. Very pretty!  We also passed this overlook and decided to stop and take some pics.



We were still like an hour early for our reservations, so we just sat in the car listening to music. Before we had left the hotel, I had said, "Do you think I need to at least take a nicer blouse?" Zach was convinced I didn't need to. Well, once we were finally seated at Salty's, I think we made everyone ELSE feel awkward with how under-dressed we were. Everyone was in cocktail dresses and shirt and tie or suits! Then, us Clampetts roll in with t-shirts and jeans. It made us laugh really hard because it made us look like such rednecks! Especially with Zach's "stache" looking like this because he forgot a razor and we never went to buy him one! Talk about creeper status!

The food was great! Anthony's and Salty's have pretty much equal quality of food, but Salty's definitely has the killer view!  We watched across the water as the sun went down and the city lights came on. It was amazing!



After dinner (I had lobster, Zach had crab legs), we just went back to the hotel and crashed for the night. We slept in a little the next day, had another complimentary breakfast and then went out adventuring again.  We went to the Space Needle.

Then, down to Pike's Market for lunch. We ate at Kell's Irish Pub that Kate suggested. The owner actually seated us and took our drink orders. She had such a heavy accent we could hardly understand her. She kept checking on everyone in the restaurant too. It was cool because we parked up above Pike's and could see the sign for Kell's, but you had to go around the back and down into the alley to get in! It was in the basement portion! Made it all the more fun. We chatted with the couple in the background of the pic below. They were so nice! They were leaving on a cruise to Alaska and were from the San Fran Bay area. We decided that one year when we go to Seatlle, we'd like to go a few days early, and go on an Alaskan cruise and then come back for business. We'd save on flights for the cruise because it would be killing two birds with one stone!

After lunch, we walked around Pike's. We totally forgot to go see the gum wall though, so we'll have to do that next year. We got cherries and peaches and ate the cherries on our way into the baseball game. So weird, but they let you take whatever you want into the stadium! We were standing outside trying to hurry and finish eating them and the lady told us we could take them in and whatever else we wanted! Pretty cool. We had fun at the Mariners game...went to the hall of fame and took some funny pics (catching a ball below). We bought a blanket as a souvenir (and because it was getting cold) and had a hot dog and peanuts! Sang "Take me out to the ball game" of course! They played the Rangers and totally got spanked, but the game was still really, really fun!

We found the stadium with ease, but couldn't find anywhere to park. The last place we saw was $25 and we were not wanting to pay that much so we kept driving. Well, that dumped us right back onto the freeway without warning and we had to drive ALL THE WAY BACK AROUND AND BACK DOWNTOWN! We were laughing, but it was certainly not ideal. The next time around, we just paid the stupid $25 to park!

This guy in the bottom pic reminded me of Super Mario with that "stache" so I just had to take a pic. He was selling "Dingle Berries" and yes, that's what they are really called. They are Shish-ka-berries which are chocolate covered strawberry and bananas on a stick, but they refer to them as dingle berries. Good marketing strategy? I don't think I could eat something that delicious if it's name was dingle berry! HA!

That was our last night there though and we flew out the next morning. It was a really fun trip though and we're looking forward to some good ideas we have for next year's trip! I have some really neat pictures from the business side of things, but I better just put those in the family photo albums! :)