First Trip to Seattle

A couple weekends ago Chase and I took our first trip to Seattle, WA from Richland. Chase has been to Seattle a couple of times now, once with B4B and once a couple weeks ago to meet up with his friend Brad. It was my first trip to Seattle ever! It was definitely a fun trip and I really enjoyed the atmosphere in the city!

I tried my hand at priceline for this trip because I really wanted to stay downtown. The public transportation in Seattle is quite good, and I didn't want to have to drive downtown and park at all! My priceline efforts failed though....I didn't quite know what I was doing and for some reason it didn't want to take my 100 dollar bid for a 300 dollar a night hotel downtown (wonder why?!?). Anyway, I decided that instead we would stay out near the airport and take the light rail into downtown. It worked out perfectly! The train ride was pretty and not too expensive. I made sure to get a hotel that was close enough to walk to the station along a sidewalk since I knew we would be coming back late both nights due to sporting events. It all worked out nicely! Oh! I forgot to mention that we got up early on Saturday and drove into the city and then drove back first thing Monday morning. That was a bit exhausting, but worth it to save money on the hotel and get to do everything we wanted to do!

Our first stop in the city was the Pike Place Market. It is basically a really large farmers market that takes up several city blocks. It has lots of fun fresh food (including fish caught that morning) and lots of craft booths! I wanted to get a picture of the fish, but it was pretty crowded in there on a Saturday morning, so we just looked around a bit and moved on.

I really wanted to get down closer to the water and check it out. A few blocks from the market is a park called Olympic Sculpture park. It was similar to the sculpture garden in Minneapolis. The location and art was pretty cool, but I'd have to say it didn't come close to the sculpture garden! I do like the photo below where I framed the space needle in the sculpture. For all your IU folks, the red sculpture was a Calder. :)

Next came the only mistake of our trip. Not eating good food. We were so hungry by this point and our next plan was to continue walking through the park along the water and then head up to Kerry Park. We knew we needed food before we did this and the closest restaurant was an Irish Pub. We didn't actually expect it to be bad, but it was. The batter wasn't even cooked on our first order of fish and chips. I had to send it back. I was afraid of getting sick from the raw egg! We did see some cool boats and sail boats pass by though from our deck seat.

We continued our walk along the Sound and took in the beautiful view. Behind those looming clouds across the sound you can normally see the snow covered Olympic Mtn range, or so Chase tells me. I never got to see them which I think is pretty normal. We also never saw Mt. Rainier on our first day there. Chase really wanted to feel the water. We never found a good place for him to get in. There were lots of big, mossy rocks. There were lots of barges and equipment to take the freight off the barges along the shore. I was intrigued by the boat that was shooting water from a hose into the water. I'm not really sure what it was doing, but it kind of reminded me of a firetruck.

A friend that we've met here, Huy, told Chase about a Kerry Park which has an awesome view of the city. Huy had showed Chase a picture from the park, so he knew it was pretty much an uphill 1 mile walk. I didn't. I survived though and got some awesome pictures! Two or three different groups of people commented on Chase's Royals hat. A couple groups were from Kansas and another just commented about the Royals recent decline... The walk to the park was rough, but it was worth it!

After taking in the sites at Kerry Park, we headed back down to the city toward the space needle. We didn't go up in the space needle this time. I think that we'll get a city pass and do all of the museums some weekend when the weather isn't as nice. I'd like to do it in the winter sometime, but since we have to go over the Snoqualmie pass to get to Seattle it can be hard to get there in the winter. Weather over the pass is unpredictable! We'll see if we make the trip in the winter ever. We may need to get 4 wheel drive car first. Anyway, we still walked by the space needle and found that it was in a really cool park area. There was an awesome water feature that all the kids were playing in. It got even cooler when it started shooting the water according to the music that was playing!

From the space needle there is a monorail that runs to downtown. It was pretty cheap and after our hike up to Kerry park, I was ready for the walking break! It was a pretty cool ride and we arrived downtown within a few blocks of the Pike Place market since is where we wanted to start our journey to the Mariners game! We love to go to different breweries. First stop was The Pike Brewing Company. I think this was our favorite beer of the night. The pub was pretty busy since its in Pike Place Market, but we managed to get a seat in the bar since we were just getting drinks.

Next stop: Elysian Brewing! It was here that Chase happen to look at his MLB app on his phone to check the score of the Royals game and we realized that the Mariners game actually started at 6:10 PM instead of 7:10 PM. So we quickly finished up these two beers and moved on!

We had planned to eat dinner at Pyramid Brewing Company. It is right across the street from the stadium. So Chase went to put our name in and I headed to the box office to get some tickets for the game. The Mariners aren't doing that great this year, so getting tickets wasn't a problem! We got a seat at Pyramid in about 20 min and still had some time to spare before the game started! Chase really wanted his Royal's hat to be in the picture...

The game was really fun! The Mariners lost, but we still had a lot of time. I got some really cool pictures too! Below is the view from our seats. Pretty good seats! We figure we probably won't come to any more Mariners games unless they are playing the Royals, so we might as well get decent seats! They play the Royals at the end of September, but its a weekday series so I don't think we'll be able to go. They are all night games too, so I doubt the Chase will make the trip by himself either.

I like to get action shots at sporting events. This is a picture of Angel's player, Mike Trout hitting a home run!

After a few innings we headed out to walk around the stadium and check it out. Just in time to get some awesome sunset shots! 

After we walked around the stadium a bit, we ended up behind the bull pin. We watched the game and the bull pin. I really wanted to get a picture of the ball going across the plate into the catchers glove, but it was really hard since I couldn't watch both the release of the ball and focus on the catcher with the camera. We had a nice glass of beer with a couple of Canadian college students. They were leaving the next day to road trip back to Toronto. Nice kids.

After the game we headed back to our hotel to start planning the next day! The one thing that Chase really wanted to do in Seattle was go on a boat ride. We had thought that we would take the harbor tour, but then we decided just to take the ferry across the Sound to Bainbridge Island. It is only accessible by ferry. 

We finally got a glimpse of Mt. Rainier on our ferry ride to Bainbridge Island. Its a bit hard to see in the pictures because its so far away and it still wasn't a very clear day. Is it ever in Seattle? Later in the day it started to rain and Chase kept making the joke, "Where are we, Seattle?"

The ferry ride was fun. Very windy but the sunshine made it warm! Once we got to Bainbridge Island we got a map and decided just to walk around for a bit. We stopped in a few shops, one of which was an outdoor store of course. I got a new Buff for hiking! Chase already had one and I wanted one too but the choices at REI were awful! This store had so many choices on the design front, so I found one I really wanted.

All of the breweries on Bainbridge Island were on the other side of the Island and we didn't have a car. So instead we went to a winery! I am so happy that we chose the winery Eleven. We couldn't buy a bottle of wine because we had tickets to the soccer game that night, so we just did wine tasting. The wine was so good. Even better all of the proceeds the winery makes go to charity. The name Eleven is derived from the fact that the smallest gear on a bike has 11 teeth on it. So fun! Chase and I really wanted to join their wine club. Some day soon we will!

After the wine tasting, we had some lovely Thai food right on the water, stopped by the old fashion candy shop and a bakery too! We had a really fun day on Bainbridge Island. Next time we want to bring our bikes and bike around the island. After all the shopping it was time to head back to Seattle and get ready for the soccer game! 

The Seattle Sounders play at the football stadium. This game was a huge game! I am surprised we found tickets in our price range. We were REALLY high though. It was Clint Dempsey's first home game and they played the Portland Timbers. They hit a record attendance at around 67,000 people. It was really fun!

They scored a goal with only a few minutes left! Yay! Sounders win!

I saw that the sunset looked beautiful, so I ran down the millions of stairs to grab a few pictures!

We had a great trip to Seattle. I can't wait to go back again. Now we know even more places we want to visit! I think we will plan to go back soon. We'll have to read about getting over the pass in the winter though! I think we'll have to buy some chains for our car. I think its required to at least have them in your car in case you need them. I'm very late on posting this. We've actually already been on another adventure to Mount Hood! Look for another post soon (I hope :))