A Taste of Seattle

Last night I met up with Chris who is a Michigan State graduate of 1980. He lives in Green Lake, Seattle with his daughter who just graduated from college and works at Microsoft and his twin boys who are 14. Chris heard about my project from his sister back in Michigan, who is just one of 13 siblings that Chris has. A few years ago Chris quit his corporate job at Microsoft to bring his twin boys around the country, logging about 50,0000 miles while driving around nearly the entire perimeter of the country.

There has been a bunch of great mini-adventures in the last 24 hours.

Lost
Ok, this might not be too much of an adventure, but I watched Lost for the first time. I don’t think I understood too much of what was going on. And I just wasn’t impressed with the show. Anyways… I watched it with Angela and four of her friends. They were a little confused to who I was invading their weekly retreat of watching Lost.

The Duchess
In this huge city of Seattle I was quite impressed with the Duchess Bar and Social Club. Everyone there knew each other it was a close knit group of people from all kinds of backgrounds. Chris was telling me that there isn’t as big of class division in Seattle as other states. People dress so casually you just don’t know how much money they have. Apparently I was hanging with a pretty big real estate guy in the area and one of the top professors in the country of whatever subject he teachers (I can’t remember what it was). I remember one guy who was particularly impressed with my story and how I made it all the way to the Duchess in this huge country and only seeing a few places in each state. It’s a legendary bar to the area on the edge of the University of Washington campus.An

Beth’s Cafe
Chris took me to Beth’s for a late night omelette. Now Beth’s is no ordinary cafe. It’s rated one of the top 10 pig out places in the country. You have a choice between a 6 egg or 12 egg omelette and it comes with all-you-can-eat hashbrowns. And you have to go to this place! It’s not pretty, and that’s what makes it great. There are all kinds of interesting characters in there the entire night, open 24 hours. The walls are plastered with drawings that people draw while eating their omelette. It will be up there for one of the cafes with the most character on the this trip.

Space Needle
This is the icon of Seattle, built in 1962 for the World’s Fair. It’s a pretty cool building and I’m happy that you can actually go outside from the viewing deck, some buildings don’t let you do that anymore. So there I was over 500 feet up, and guess what? It wasn’t raining! There was even some sunshine peaking through the clouds.

Pike Place Market
I’ve seen videos of this place, read about it, and heard about it. Today I got to wander around there and I have to say hands down it’s probably one of the coolest places in North America. Of course I haven’t seen a lot yet, but it’s fantastic! The fresh fish, fruit, veggies, and then there are the arts and crafts, and hundreds upon hundreds of people all over. And I treated myself to a eggnog chai tea at the original Starbucks.

I also took the 3-mile walk around Green Lake, had a drive through the University of Washington, saw the Experience Music Project building, which is just chaotic. So it’s been a little taste of everything in the last several hours. I can see myself in Seattle one day.