Swiss Family takes Seattle
A three day weekend rolled around in November, and the fam took it as an opportunity to visit me in Seattle. Well, that's not entirely true. They all love the Pacific Northwest, and joke that I'm a convenient excuse. That's my family for y'all.
But really, they were coming to see me because we rarely are all together in one location (sadly). The downside was that I wold have to work all weekend due to preplanned festivals for the chocolate shop. Rest-assured, we'd make it work.
To maximize our time, everyone flew into town in the wee hours of Thursday evening. Gina wasn't supposed to arrive until 2 am while my parents came in at midnight. I was to pick them up first, kill some time, grab Gina, and SLEEP. It was quite a week and I was exhausted, so I accidentally fell asleep and was late to pick up my parents (they weren't too happy about that). Anyway, it all worked out and we decided to snag a midnight snack at Beth's Cafe.
Mom didn't seem to fond of the restaurant, but Dad was loving it. He digs the simple/basic grungy diners. We chomped down on our food and returned to the airport to get Gina. This was the first time we'd been together since March and we all talked until we were absolutely tired.
Friday rolled around and we hit the ground running because that's the kind of family we are. This was my only true free day, so we had all of Seattle as our oyster. The hotel we were staying at was located in Lower Queen Anne, and we bounced over to Citizen for breakfast. The quaint little restaurant served up some EXCELLENT food. I ordered the breakfast tacos and scarfed those right down.
With the whole day ahead of us, we decided to venture down to the southern side of Seattle and visit the Georgetown neighborhood. I had never been down there and was excited to see a new part of Seattle. Heading there, we made a few wrong turns here and there and maybe some circling around a block once or twice, and eventually made it to the main street of the area.
Georgetown happens to be one of the oldest neighborhoods in Seattle with industrial buildings converted to local businesses and restaurants. It looked quite cohesive with the brick. Anyway, aesthetics aside, we took our time popping in and out of stores. Towards the end of the road, we found and Ellenos Greek Yogurt and stopped for a snack. Now I think I've been to every single Ellenos location (aside from grocery stores which basically don't count).
Along the way, there was a bunch of street art and murals in the alleys which was kind of fun!
With my new knowledge of chocolate, we checked out a Seattle favorite, Fran's Chocolates.
On our way back up to downtown Seattle, we made a detour east to take a nice afternoon stroll around Seward Park. Seward has become one of my favorite areas, it's a little hidden gem. Walking around in the forest makes you forget that you're in a huge city. Plus, the water is incredible and on clear days you can see the mountains. Everyone enjoyed it. We walked on the beach and took in the autumn colors.
As we left the park, somehow Dad spotted otters swimming around in the water and we once again pulled over to get a better view. A few dog walkers stopped to say hello and asked if we had seen the otters. He exclaimed that he'd been living in the area for 30 years and had never seen one. For whatever reason, our family always has a knack for coincidences like that.
Back in the car we went, driving along Lake Washington and admiring the beautiful homes overlooking the water. Nearing the city, we made another detour to the bridge at Dr. Jose Rizal Park. Not too much of a park, although we didn't spend too much time searching for the natural area, but we headed directly for the bridge over eastbound 99. The bridge offered incredible city views of downtown Seattle with skyscrapers, the sound, with the hustle and bustle of a busy Friday.
With a little time to spare before our dinner reservation and motivation to beat the Friday evening traffic, we ventured up to Olympic Sculpture Park to relax and unwind while watching the sunset. This is one of my other favorite spots because it was one of the first places we went the very first time we visited Seattle a few years ago. The next day we toured UW in the pouring rain, but it didn't deter me (obviously) from this awesome place.
Well, in the end we hit traffic, but eventually made it to our evening dinner at Primo for pizza with a few pals.
Saturday began pretty early as we made our way over to Madison Park to have a little breakfast at Bing's. I highly recommend checking out Madison Park, I did not realize how cute it was. Also, Bing's was awesome. I was mad at Gina later that day since she finished my leftover potatoes as lunch on their hike because they were THAT good.
Afterwards, they dropped me off at Pike Place Market for work. Luckily, I got a little break halfway through my festival shift and we had the fastest dinner ever at Tanaka San in South Lake Union. It was quite good, although over priced in my personal humble opinion for Asian fusion food, especially since there is already so much delicious Asian cuisine already existing in Seattle.
I went back to Seattle Center for my second shift and met up with the fam to grab some Molly Moon's Ice Cream, always a classic. We took our ice cream to Kerry Park (where we also spotted a raccoon meandering the streets) and called it a night.
Sunday started off the same as Saturday, with breakfast at Tilikum Place Cafe. We had great views of the Space Needle as we gorged ourselves on our meals.
We jetted over to the cruise terminal docks to drop me off at the NW Chocolate Festival. Thankfully they got to take a look around before the craziness started, but we had to part ways and say goodbye here.
Very happy I got to spend time with my family even if it was just a quick trip!!