The Coffee Capital

Seattle has been on my list of places to go ever since I had my first starbucks coffee. I used to buy it through their catalog, and then they started opening up stores, with the first one in seattle at the pike place market. I love the coffee, but when you're in seattle, every corner has a great coffee shop! Check out our seattle coffee page for everything you need to know about java in seattle and our coffee lingo page to be an expert on all the talk.

fri | sat | sun | mon | tues | vancouver | victoria | fri2 |sat2

day 1: friday, august 29
We arrived at seattle-tacoma airport at night and checked into our hotel a couple of blocks from the space needle.

day 2: saturday, august 30
The day started with breakfast at lowell's in the famous pike place market (see my pike place mkt pics). I had smoked salmon and eggs and of course a hot cup of joe. The market has lots of farm fresh produce and the famous pike place fish company, where they toss around whole fish to the amusement of gawking tourists. One of the tossers told the tourists, "You know, we sell this fish too", because everyone was just watching, not buying the fish.

We then headed to the northern end of town to check out the chittenden locks and salmon ladder. You walk right on top of the lock and watch it empty or fill up with water (see my chittenden locks pics). Then the lock opens and the ships go on their merry way. There's also a stairway leading below the water line into a room with windows that gives you a good look at the salmon as they swim upstream to spawn. We even saw one or two jumping the ladders against a strong current! To top off the day, we had dinner at sky city, the restaurant at the top of the space needle (see my around town pics). Everything was great, but the lunar orbit dessert was out of this world! It's basic chocolate ice cream served in a big bowl of dry ice with the ice cream inside a smaller bowl. (Here's a pic of the dry ice fog all over the table!)

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day 3: sunday, august 31
After sunday morning mass at st. james cathedral, we headed for lunch at the pyramid alehouse, which is across the street from safeco field, the home of the mariners. The place was packed for some pre-game lunches and beer. I had more salmon — and some tasty seasonal brews — before heading in to safeco for some sunday afternoon baseball featuring the seattle mariners vs. my baltimore orioles (see my mariners pics). The O's are brutal this year. I think they had 2 hits in the game.

After the game we took a break before dinner at ivar's salmon house, located on lake union. This restaurant is part of a small local chain founded in 1938. The salmon house features authentic alder-smoked salmon set in a replica of a northwest indian longhouse. I had the alder barbequed salmon trio, featuring wild king, sockeye, and northwest keta salmons. Three very different tastes! The smoky alder flavor takes some getting used to, but it's still delicious. After dinner we went for a beer at the elysian brew pub.

day 4: monday, september 1
Today was a driving day as we headed in a counter clockwise loop, first going south to mount rainier national park (see my mt. rainier pics). Looking through a telescope from the henry jackson visitor center, we could just barely see some hikers high up on the face of the snow capped mountain. Unbelievable! Later we headed north to the famous snoqualmie falls, which were shown in the opening credits of twin peaks (a landmark in pop culture televison). The falls here are higher than niagara, but quite a bit narrower. We were getting hungry from all the walking and siteseeing, so we made a quick stop at the columbia winery before having dinner at the red hook brew pub in woodinville, which is just northeast of lake seattle. For a change of pace, I had a burger and a six shot glass beer sampler. Unfortunately, they no longer brew one of my all time favorites, red hook hefe weizen, but the other brews are still mighty fine.

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day 5: tuesday, september 2
We said goodbye to seattle as we headed north. First stop was everett, washington for a tour of the boeing plant — the world's largest building. The tour guide told us that inside this building you could fit 20 football fields! The 6 assembly lines of passenger jets was pretty impressive. The shuttle bus took us out to their private airfield where they test the newly assembled planes, across an overpass of an interstate highway! Apparently, bringing planes across the overpass used to stop traffic, so now they do it late at night.

When the tour was over, we headed north across the border into canada and toward vancouver......

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day 8: friday, sept 5
After leaving victoria, canada and finally landing back in the US of A, we scooted over to olympic national park and to sol duc hot springs. The swimming pools here are fed by the springs and are naturally around 100 degrees. In the gathering darkness we traveled down to the town of poulsbo, an old norwegian settlement, for a great halibut fish and chips dinner at J&J's fish house. Then we crossed the famous tacoma narrows bridge without incident (this is the famous "galloping gertie", the bridge that swayed wildly in the winds before its collapse in 1940!) and made a late arrival at our hotel in olympia.

day 9: saturday, sept 6
We made a quick tour of the state capitol grounds (see a pic of the capitol building) before heading for the sea-tac airport and back home.

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