I vacationed in Seattle a few weeks ago. It was fun and not as rainy as expected.
We split our stay into two different places, the first few nights in the University District (University Inn) and then the following nights in Downtown (Hotel 1000).
We ate so much food. Everything was delicious. Well, except for the Asian food. San Gabriel Valley does that the best. But we also hit the main points of interest of Seattle (University of Washington, Seattle Center for Space Needle and Chihuly Garden and Glass, Waterfront Park, Olympic Sculpture Park, Pike's Place, the Observatory, and then detoured for Snoqualmie Falls and some Bellevue exploring). It was mostly eating though.
Overall the trip was very nice and relaxed, since we spread all the tourist things over many days.
Below are some photos that I took of the trip. They aren't in any specific order because I am lazy.
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| View from hotel room (University Inn) in the morning: It was very foggy so you can't make out Mount Rainier. I saw the mountain once early in the morning. The view was very pretty, but I forgot to snap a photo. |
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| View from same hotel room in the evening: You can see Downtown in the distance. |
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| Broad Street: I snapped a random photo coming back from the Sculpture Park. We ate lunch at an Irish pub. The lamb skewers were delicious. |
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| Olympic Sculpture Park: The park is quite nice. There weren't many people since the weather was kinda drab and people were probably working in cubicles anyway. |
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| Glass art at Chihuly Garden and Glass: This piece reminds me of fluorescent light tubes. |
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| Bottom of Snoqualmie Falls: The river current was very fast. Rivers in SoCal do not look like this. |
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| Space Needle: I did not go up this. |
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| Chihuly Garden and Glass: I like canoes. The set up looks like canoeing in space and being surrounded by tiny planets. Very beautiful. |
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| Chihuly Garden and Glass: This is a giant monster. I do not understand the appeal of this. Honestly the glass exhibit only lasted us at most two hours of viewing. We are not the right company for art. |
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| Bellevue Botanical Gardens: We went to the Garden D'lights exhibit at the Bellevue Botanical Gardens. The lights were very pretty. It was $5 a person so the displays weren't crazy impressive or anything, but I still enjoyed walking a circle. |
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| Bellevue Botanical Gardens: This was my favorite light set up. |
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| Elliot's Oyster House: We ate at Elliot's Oyster House for lunch. We sat inside but this was the view looking out the window. I ordered their seafood salad and some oysters. The seafood salad was okay. |
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| Photo of Downtown: I snapped this photo when leaving Elliot's. |
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| Columbia Center: We went up this building to the 70th (70 something I think) floor to the Observatory for a great view of the city... decided to opt out of the Space Needle view for this one. Use Groupon. |
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| The Observatory: View from the Observatory |
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| The Observatory: View from the Observatory |
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| The Observatory: View from the Observatory |
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| The Observatory: View from the Observatory... the highway is different here. |
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| Pike's Place Market: Walking around the famous farmer's market. There are many floors. The pasta people won't take no for an answer and made me try a raw and dry noodle. It was not good... why would they make us sample them... |
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| Pike's Place Market: The fishermen all have beards. |
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| Lecosho dinner: The best pork chop ever dinner. But sadly the worst photo too. I ordered a beet salad to start. It was good too. Dessert was some maple pot with a cookie. That was only okay. |
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| University Inn: I really like the "European style" bedding. I had a great stay here and it was very cheap since we booked early. |
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| University of Washington: This school is huge. |
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| University of Washington: I am not used to trees being so big. And there were so many of them. |
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| Molly Moon's Ice Cream in the University Village: Early grey scoop on a waffle cone. I have never had ice cream this delicious. |
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| University Inn: Pineapples everywhere. We used the shuttle service and ate continental breakfast every morning. In the afternoon they put out cupcakes. |
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| Olympic Sculpture Park: I like the ampersand. |
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| On the freeway: Leaving Seattle and heading to Snoqualmie. We also visited Bellevue afterwards. |
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| Snoqualmie Falls: This waterfall is huge. It was very wet. |
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| Bottom of Snoqualmie Falls: I am not used to seeing this much fresh water. |
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| Portage Bay Cafe: I ordered the french toast with bruleed bananas. It was an incredibly sweet breakfast. The restaurant is semi connected to the University Inn, but not really. |
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| Hotel 1000: The bathtub is very nice. The water falls from the ceiling. The restaurant (BOKA) at the hotel is delicious. It's weird that BOKA doesn't have a high rating on Yelp. |
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| Rachel's Ginger Beer: Ordered a white peach ginger ale and it was very good. |
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| Waterfront Park: It really wasn't much of a park. We didn't do the wheel. |
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| Seattle Public Library: The best internet ever. |
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| Beecher's cheese curds: We had the famous macaroni and cheese here. It was not good. The texture was so grainy... |
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| Elliot's Oyster House: I tried a few oysters even though I was very paranoid about getting ASP. I'm always worried about getting diseases. My biggest fear is somehow getting and dying from meningitis. The Church Point oyster was my favorite. |
IMAGE SOURCE: http://www.gohuskies.com/fls/30200/MBB_Tournament/images/space.jpg
