Yvette's Inner Geek Blog

Our lovely Thursday in Seattle was followed by an equally beautiful Friday in terms of weather, but more grumpiness on an emotional level. This likely had to do with the fact that we walked about 5 more miles than expected throughout the course of the day.

The plan was good; walk down Pike Street from the hotel to First Avenue, where we would catch a bus in the free ride zone to Jackson Street and walk two blocks to Safeco Field for a 12:30 game day tour of the ballpark. Except… for some reason, the only bus that passed us on First Avenue was not going that direction. This directly contradicted the hotel front desk ladies, who assured us that LOTS of buses go straight down First Avenue. So. We walked 2 miles (according to Google Maps) and arrived at Safeco Field a breezy 15 minutes before tour time. But I was damp with sweat and not nearly as caffeinated as I would have liked, and I was hungry and thirsty, so even the nice weather did not seem as nice as it could have if we’d been able to take a damn bus for a portion of our journey.

Still, the ballpark tour was cool. Even though Ken Griffey, Jr. did not lead it as I was expecting. (I thought he worked for the team now?) A shrewish woman in her 70s named Helen led the tour instead, and she was full of information and excitement as long as nobody asked any questions. Most of our fellow tour-takers were Japanese and abided by her unspoken rule—too busy affirming stereotypes by fawning over every mention and piece of memorabilia related to Ichiro. We got to sit in the press box for a few minutes, and I thought that was cool. Ben about wet his pants from the excitement of standing in the dugouts and then on the field behind home plate. On the dirt, mind you. DO NOT EVEN THINK ABOUT TOUCHING THE GRASS, Helen said, with the implied sentiment that she would put on her Gremlin face and bite off your Tender Parts with one snarl if you did.

After the tour, we browsed the team store and confirmed that we are well past the Obtain Chinsy Souvenir From Everywhere stage. Well, that was more my hurdle than Ben’s to begin with. We went across the street to Pyramid Brewery for lunch. I enjoyed water and some of Ben’s Audacious Apricot Ale. My burger was okay, but the sweet potato fries were Audaciously Awesome and satisfied both my carb and vegetable cravings.

We walked back up First Avenue afterward to Yesler Way and Pioneer Square, where a great miracle occurred and we caught a bus. Instead of taking it all the way back to Pike Street, we got off a little early and went down to the waterfront where we caught the last Argosy Harbor Cruise of the day. We wanted to take full advantage of the nice Seattle weather and got some great views of the skyline. There was also a sea lion hanging out on a buoy by the West Seattle peninsula who posed for photos as we cruised on by.

Still full from lunch, we finally made it back to the hotel in the early evening for a nap. Later on we relied on The Internet for our bus itinerary to the Space Needle. Guess what? The Internet (specifically King County’s Metro Trip Planner) provided much more accurate information than the front desk. There was no line at the Space Needle, and not many people hanging out at the top while we were there (about 10pm-11pm). We ended up back at Tap House Grill for a late-night snack and, of course, some beer. Well, Ben had a beer and I drank water and we complained to each other about our sore legs and feet.

Saturday we met up with our friends Liz and Josh (and their 3.5-year-old daughter, whom I haven’t seen since she was a month old) and ate good Chinese food at Pike Place Market. Except the diet Pepsi was nasty. We stopped by Golden Age Collectables to pick up our allotted one-per-person comic for Free Comic Book Day, and then headed back to Safeco Field (in their car, thankfully) for an actual baseball game. We sat in “Area 51,” which is in right field close to where Ichiro hangs out. He’s number 51.

The most exciting part of the game for me was batting practice, where Liz and I whimpered and cowered together as baseballs came screaming toward us multiple times. Ben and Josh were ready to knock us down “for safety” to catch any balls headed in our direction. A few came close, but attempts were foiled by people with bug mitts and long reaches who didn’t even end up having seats in our section.

Josh said that I HAD to try the stadium’s garlic fries, so I did. And I basically breathed garlic fire for three days. I officially recommend them, but with caution. And plan to share because you actually get a lot for the overpriced fee.

It was “Turn Back the Clock” night at Safeco Field, and the Mariners and the Oakland A’s were dressed in retro jerseys from 1939. So they were actually the Seattle Rainers and the Oakland Oaks. There was no modern music played, only Swing and traditional baseball tunes on the organ. It was pretty cool… the Jumbotron even displayed video with a sepia and crackle filter so it looked like film footage from 1939. I liked the gimmick. The game went pretty quickly, and though we thought it might go into extra innings, Oakland ended up winning it in the ninth. Josh was sad, but Ben was just happy to be able to watch a live pro baseball game again. Going to a minor league Salt Lake Bees game just isn’t the same.

Sunday we met up with Liz and Josh again to go to the zoo. Seattle has a nice zoo, and if you like birds, you NEED to visit the Willawong Station. It’s a “bird feeding experience” that brings out the best of bird ownership without the need for you to clean up any poop or change the cage. In a different exhibit, I was rushed by a kookaburra. Luckily there was a plate of glass or plexiglass between us, because that m’f'n beak would have hurt bigtime.

After the zoo, we went back to Liz and Josh’s sweet new digs for dinner (some of the best take-out Pad Thai I’ve ever had) and general hanging out. It’s hard to not live closer to them.

On Monday, there was some time to kill after we checked out of our hotel and before our flight, so we meandered down the street to the Seattle Aquarium. Ben enjoyed it more than expected, and revealed to me that he wasn’t sure he’d ever been in an aquarium. I couldn’t believe it, but then again I worked a summer at Sea World of Ohio (when it still existed) and can’t imagine life without occasional aquarium visits. In any case, it turns out that I really, really love puffins. Is it possible that I’ve never seen them before? Perhaps. I spent a proportionally large amount of time staring and smiling at them and taking a bajillion crappy photos that didn’t turn out. Well, a couple kind of did. I’ll get those up on Flickr in the next couple days.

And that was our Seattle trip. We won’t be moving there anytime soon, but I definitely want to go back to visit. Now that we’ve done our downtown tourist trip, we can try it from a different angle. If it’s baseball season, though, the angle will still have to include a game! No garlic fries next time, though.

Springtime in Seattle

Originally uploaded by innergeek

Ben and I are visiting Seattle for a few days, and I don’t know what people are talking about regarding the cloudy/rainy weather. It was beautiful today! Check out all the photos I took by clicking that link over there on the right.

We arrived Wednesday evening and made our way to the Taphouse Grill downtown for dinner. The food was delicious (I had the coconut curry with rice noodles and tofu; Ben had a salmon burger that didn’t taste “fishy” at all). Unfortunately, we only got to try a few of the 160 beers on tap… Ben liked the Scottish Kilt Lifter beer and I liked the Baron Maibock from my sampler.

We didn’t stay out too late because we had to get up for a 10am Savor Seattle food tour of Pike Place Market.

The food tour was great—we learned a lot about the history of the market as we went through, and were fed lots of yummy samples. Freshly fried mini doughnuts, Market Spice tea, various smoked salmons, chowder (clam and seafood for everyone else, coconut-based vegan for me because of a shellfish allergy), piroshky, muscot grapes, Beecher’s handmade cheese (their gourmet Mac & Cheese is really incredible), chocolate covered cherries, and Etta’s crab cakes (where I had cornbread pudding as an alternate and I think that was my favorite thing on the tour, even though it doesn’t sound like much, ZZOMG it is the best!). The tour guides were fun (normally there would be only one, but Stephanie was training David) and if you visit Seattle in the future, I would recommend starting your trip out with this tour of Pike Place.

As I said before, the day was gorgeous, so we spent a lot of time walking around the market after the tour. The craft stalls had really cool stuff, and we found a small hand-blown blue glass pumpkin that had to come home with us. We mostly made notes of where to go back so that we didn’t spend all of our money at once… though we very easily could have. I fell in love with some sizable forged steel and blown glass lamps by Paul Petersen. They’re a couple hundred dollars each, so I’m not sure we would actually get one at this point. But they are absolutely on my WANT list. I just loved them. The one in the photo here was at least 24 inches tall.

There were (permit-holding) street buskers all over the market and at designated places along the sidewalk who added to the atmosphere of cool. Also, we spotted two women sharing a tender moment on a side street in front of a park. You don’t see that every day in Utah…

After our food tour, there were still several stalls that offered free samples. I really loved the Fireweed Honey at Moon Valley Honey, which Ben thinks would turn into some incredibly yummy handmade meade.  The potato leek soup at La Buona Tavola was good—but even better after an eyedropper of “instant happiness” (aka white truffle oil) was infused into it. We were lured into the store to taste some 12-year-old aged cherry balsamic vinegar, and would have purchased some if it weren’t for the fact that is was $50 a bottle. I was almost ready to become a world-traveling professional balsamic vinegar taster after that. The Savor Seattle tour guide had also told us about one of her favorite wines made from muscot grapes (which, if you’ve never tried them, taste nothing like how you imagine grapes tasting and everything like you imagine ambrosia tasting) that was sold at this shop. The really friendly guy at La Buona Tavola gave us a sample of the award-winning 2008 Tre Donne “Moscato d’Asti” wine imported from Italy, and we couldn’t walk away without taking the bottle with us. Now the question is, will it last long enough to make the trip home with us? We would have to put it in our suitcase, so I’m not sure…..

We also got a free sample of Pappardelle’s Dark Chocolate Linguine and had trouble resisting its chocolatey temptation. Truth is, chocolate is not as dear to me as it is for most women, but this was damn fine tasting pasta—and it wasn’t even cooked yet. The dry samples were definitely good enough to eat in copious quantities. And recipes were included with each package that included ingredients like vanilla ice cream and fresh fruit (on top of PASTA!) so you better believe that a package of this stuff went straight into our suitcase.

The girl who initially offered us the sample—and then schmoozed us with her great sense of humor—let me take this photo of her. I missed her name, but she was fun and I told her about my blog so maybe she’ll stop by and tell us who she is so she can be Internet Famous. Or maybe I’ll walk by the booth again in the next couple days and ask her myself!

Btw, the “lime cilantro linguini” next to the chocolate stuff in the photo? Gross. Cilantro makes me sick. (I have to be very careful when eating Mexican, Thai, etc.)

We rounded out the day with a lovely dinner and lively conversation at my cousins’ house near the University district, where we were served a fresh salmon steak and then savored some mini cheesecakes we picked up at The Confectional at Pike Place. We took a bus to get to their house from downtown, and en route had an engaging conversation with an older guy sitting near us who has lived in Seattle for 40 years. “Everything is an exception here,” he said with fondness.

The guide book that I browsed through before coming to Seattle had said that people in Seattle are “cool,” in that they’re more aloof. I have not had that impression at all here. We really like Seattle. The people seem very laid back and “cool,” if by “cool” you mean fun and friendly.