Seattle - Day Four

Disclaimer:  This post will wrap up the recap of our Seattle trip.  I took 255 photos while we were in Seattle and I should warn you that there are A LOT of photos in this post! In fact, I was a worried that I might have exceeded a limit on photos in a post but it appears not. Usually, I spend a lot of time sorting through my photos and editing them before I include them in a post. However, since I had so many photos for this portion of our trip (and not all of them were of people or really interesting things/places), I focused on the "people" photos and I wasn't as diligent with editing the "non-people" photos. 


Instead of running Sunday morning, I decided to walk around Michael and Sheena's neighborhood. I found that it was harder for me to walk up the hills than to run up them and I thought my quads and glutes would be quite sore on Monday!  (And they were!). I took my camera with me to take some photos of the flora as well as a couple of water gardens that were in the neighborhood.  

 

 

Shortly after we moved to Australia, we filled in the water garden at our home in Fairfax as a preventive measure and to avoid any tenant/liability issues.  I would like to have another one installed when we move back next summer so I am on the look-out for designs and ideas.  I LOVED these two water gardens that I saw in the neighborhood. The second one is a bit too much for our yard but maybe a scaled down version would work.

 

Fortunately, the sun was out and the sky was clear.  

We had a busy day of outside activities planned with and rain would have definitely put a damper on our day.  The plan was to drive to Bremerton (about 30 minutes NorthWest of Gig Harbor), ride the ferry over to Seattle and walk around Pike Place Market for the afternoon. Declan and Kylie ready to head out...

Boarding the ferry at Bremerton.

On the ferry...

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Approaching the Seattle harbor.

 

 

After disembarking the ferry, we had a short (10 minute) walk to the Pike Place Market. This market is one of the oldest farmers' markets in the United States and one of Seattle's most popular tourist destinations.  Compared to the markets that we have been to in SouthEast Asia, Pike Place was very organized and clean. The first thing Caitlynne and I noticed was that all of the perishable items for sale were displayed on ICE and kept at the proper temperature!  If you have read my previous posts about the markets in Bangkok, you know why this was immediately notable to us. The sign in the photo below made me giggle.  I seriously doubt that I would ever see something similar in Thailand...

Into the Market we went...

 

 

The displays of flowers in the market were so beautiful.  As you will probably figure out from the photos below, peonies are one of my favorite flowers and, since they were in season, they were plentiful.  I had a few peony bushes in my garden at our home in Fairfax and would get so excited over the three or four flowers they produced each year.  You can only imagine how excited I was to see the buckets and buckets of peonies throughout the Market.  I felt like a kid in a candy shop and went a little overboard on the photos I took of the flowers...

There were also a lot of vendors offering fresh fruit and vegetables.  I was surprised to see several vegetables that I did not recognize and that made me feel a little bit better about being in Bangkok and having NO idea what ANYTHING is!

 

Aren't these figs beautiful?!?  After I saw the figs, all I could think about was having a grilled fig  topped with a bit of goat cheese and a drizzle of honey...

 The fishmongers...

We bought some seafood to grill at home for dinner and learned in conversation with the fishmonger that he was a frequent traveler to Thailand/SouthEast Asia and very familiar with our "corner" of the world. Small world. (Although, an even smaller world... Caitlynne saw a boy from her P.E. class at ISB while we were shopping in Fairfax this afternoon).

We also visited the very first Starbucks on Pike Place.  It was quite the tourist attraction and the lines were out the door. 

 

 Heading home...

 

We took the ferry back to Bremerton and drove back to Gig Harbor.  Kevin and Michael grilled the scallops, salmon and sole that we bought at the Market for our dinner.  Yum!  We also had another s'mores fest by the firepit and then it was off to pack and prepare for our very early departure Monday morning.  


We all loved Seattle and the cooler temps were a nice change from the heat and humidity of Bangkok.  It was wonderful seeing Michael, Sheena, Kylie and Mackenzie and getting to spend some time with Declan.  My heart just melted when he "motioned" for ME to pick him up on Sunday morning.  Such a cutie!  What a great start to our vacation!


On to Virginia!