Seattle Adventures

I’m still not sure of the season here. We arrived in autumn, yet yesterday’s walk took us through walkways lined with blooming tulips, and today we’re clouded over by the rainy chill of Seattle’s winter. Regardless of the seasonal indecisiveness, we continue trekking up and down the hilly streets of Seattle and enjoying the sites.

 

EMP (Experience Music Project)

Since it’s Gabi’s goal to see 5 of architect Frank Gehry’s buildings in her lifetime, we visited #3 today at the music museum. Apparently this building has had mixed reviews, with it being on Forbes list of the 10 ugliest buildings, and some people referring to it as a “blob” or “hemorrhoids” or a “dead sea creature”, but I thought it was pretty neat. The building is an interesting mix of brass, glass, and a giant blue wave, but we were most intrigued by this purple wall:

As was a random man in the street who chose to take part of this photo taking adventure by taking pictures of us without asking. He proceeded to tell us he used to be a photographer who’s now retired and wanders the streets looking for subjects (we assumed the second part). He also gave us his blog website to check out the pics, which we haven’t been able to find, so we’re still trying to decide if he was being nice or creepy.

Anyways, we learned that Gabi can’t really jump, nor can she time photos of others jumping, so we ended up with these silly results:

 

Oysters

Oysters are a hit here. So we headed to a cute restaurant right on the pier for happy hour, where people order oysters by the dozens.

Thankfully, our waitress said the first oyster is always ‘on the house’, so it was quite a risk free adventure.

We slurped them down, and I felt like I had accidentally swallowed a mouth full of seawater, with the added misfortune of swallowing some sort of sea slug (akin to accidentally catching a little fly in your mouth while bike riding). I think the waitress has seen this type of reaction before, as she told us she’d give us time to “think about it”, and then never mentioned them again. Nor did she question us while we ordered everything on the 6-item menu BUT oysters.

The rest of the food was delicious: mussels, calamari, fish tacos, and shrimp. Plus a margarita to enjoy while we hid away from the rain.

 

Sparky

Day 3 and our Seattle adventures took us to the outlet malls. Google told us the bus ride was 1h45min, and Lauren laughed at the thought. So our aging selves came in handy for once, as we enjoyed the 25+ car rental rates on this cute little machine:

We were greeted at Alamo with a, “let me guess, you’re going to the outlets”… and zoomed our way through the greenery of Seattle to end up with bags and bags of goodies:

Don’t judge me. 80% of these bags are Gabi’s. I had to reel her in.

The bonus for us as Albertans is that we are tax exempt in Washington. You just show your drivers license and pay no sales tax. It’s great – you just pay the price on the tag.

PS: A little interesting sign we would never see at home, at the entrance of a restaurant:

PS2: My personal favorite of Gabi’s jump shots: