Sunday, September 06, 2015

NW Day TEN: Seattle in an Afternoon



The Jedi and I woke up around seven, showered, packed the room, and loaded the van. We checked out of the hotel and headed over to the light rail station. The Jedi made it as far as the light rail station, and then realized he was still feeling rather poorly. 

We sat down and did a quick google map search for a public library nearby where the Jedi could go sit, read, work on characters for a game, take a nap in the van if he needed to….etc. Finding one a few blocks away that was open till 5, the Jedi reluctantly agreed that he needed another day of rest.

I hopped on the light rail by myself and found my way to Tia’s apartment without any trouble. Go me. 


We hung out for a bit there, she showed me some “So You Think You Can Dance” videos, and Sweetling finished packing up her stuff. By that time, it was nearly lunch, so we headed downstairs to Vahn’s (sp?), which Tia said was practically her second living room, since she and the Programmer ate there so often. I had a huge salmon salad, Sweetling had two large slices of a huge sourdough pizza, and while Boybot was curious about just what the Monster Burger Challenge was, in the end, he ordered a classic bacon hamburger.

After taking Sweetling’s leftovers back up to the apartment, we walked the mile and a half to one of Tia’s favorite parks….a sculpture park on the waterfront.




And then we walked a little further to a second park, where I was hoping to be able to see some seals on the rocky shore line. There were no seals, but there was an opportunity to collect rocks and shells.




Another short walk back to a city street, where Tia called for a ride in an Uber car to our next destination, the tallest building in Seattle, the Columbia Tower. We headed up to the observation deck for a bird’s eye view of the city.


It was just a bit too cloudy to see the mountains clearly, but it was still a nice view.

Back on the ground, we walked the few blocks back to Tia’s, where we had big and yummy cookies and a tasty meat and cheese plate that Tia “threw together” for us. I have to put that in quotes, because even what she “throws together” has such a great balance of flavors and textures. My thrown together plates are a couple packets of Aldi’s lunch meats and pre-sliced cheeses with a box of triscuit crackers and a sleeve of Ritz crackers. Two cracker types make it fancy. If I’m going really high brow, I’ll slice a cucumber, put a bag of carrot sticks and a bottle of ranch on the table too. A bag of Aldi’s grapes just puts the whole thing over the top. Tia’s plate was three different type of gourmet cheeses, high end salami, broushetta, another meat that I love that I never heard of, slices of fresh peaches, and two little bowls of farm jams….strawberry&red pepper and whatever the local Washington berry is called.  Oh, all served on a proper round wooden cheese platter. 

While we three girls sat at the table and munched and chatted, Boybot and the Programmer raced in a computer game and then crushed some poor unsuspecting opponent in HearthStone.

The rest of our afternoon passed all too swiftly, and soon it was time to gather up, give a few last hugs, and begin walking through the Seattle mist to the train station.

On the ride back to SeaTac, we were blessed by a beautiful rainbow. Since I was feeling pretty teary eyed, this was a very welcome pick-me-up.

We rejoined the Jedi, and was on the road to Portland in pretty short order. Dinner was Subway, eaten in the van on the road. The original goal was to hit Portland by nine or nine-thirty, but an accident in Tacoma had two lanes of I-5 south shut down, so I don’t know what our new ETA is.

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