Seattle Birthday Trip Part 2

So let's see, I left off right in the middle of Friday.... we were bouncing around Discovery Park and planned on making our way a bit more north on our friend Jeanne's recommendation again and checking out the Chittenden Locks.

It was pretty nice walking around the park and seeing the boats move through. I remember the first time I had the whole locks concept explained to me when our school visited the C&O Canal. I still think it makes only partial sense.

Also did I mention I'm pretty terrified of boats? So as we're watching this process I keep turning to Ed and explaining to him how boats make no sense as well and how they are bound to topple over at any moment and sink and how I should probably go rescue that little girl that is standing on that boat oh so calmly not knowing the death trap she is on. Ed rightfully just shakes his head.

After the locks we made our way to another restaurant from The Layover that I was determined to visit: The Walrus and the Carpenter. It was a bit chaotic considering it's very small, max capacity 45 if I remember right.

Ed's excited!

Ok. Ok. Straight talk. These are the best oysters I've ever had. It was ridiculous how delicious they were. And something I wanted to say before but I don't want people to get the wrong idea. Seattle kind of smells like oysters - fresh, watery, muted ocean. I'm sure that contributed to my being so in love with it all.

I loved this little guy, all covered in his finery. :) I know, they're just barnacles, but it looked like it was all dressed up!

Don't. Even. Say. It. I was so mad I cracked the yoke before taking a picture. I got too excited for this steak tartare. It was pretty great.... I think I prefer using quail eggs just because it's a bit less yoke. And I like our Eric Ripert recipe mostly because it's tangy-er. This was more rich and meaty tasting, with a straight forward flavor. I realize I'm saying raw meat tastes meaty but, our other recipe takes a bit of the animal taste away and you have something more varied with the cornichons and a little hot sauce. Still thought this was very good, just not my all time favorite.

Ok this picture doesn't make it look great, but these brussel sprouts were fantastic. A little salty, but I loved how much they were cooked and how fresh it tasted, despite the appearance.

This was the pickled herring on toast with beets, topped with salmon roe. This was also really good. If you like herring, you'll like this. No we didn't eat the head :) We were pretty stuffed so we didn't get a dessert but I did have a liiiiiittle bit more room so.... more oysters! We picked out three of our favorites and had two more of each. If you don't like oysters you need to go here, try these oysters and if your mind isn't changed you are just missing out my friend.

We drove back to the hotel and refreshed ourselves for the evening. Now, I think I'm portraying our visit as one that followed a particular timeline, let me clarify. We did everything EARLY. Partially because of reservation issues, but also because we would generally skip breakfast and just do two meal days, cramming in activities but still ready for bed by like 9:30. I know, we're WILD! But! This night we decided to go out and enjoy ourselves, hell it was the weekend. So we went down to a bar in Pioneer Square called Merchant's Cafe. It's the oldest restaurant in Seattle and by cafe they really mean bar. It reminded me a lot of Wheaton's Royal Mile and Barnaby's mashed together. I should also say for those of you thinking of visiting, Pioneer Square is... sketchy. I felt safe with Ed and at one point we did see a huge herd of police officers on horses, but I'm not sure I would recommend hanging around there solo, late at night. That being said we had a great experience. The bartender at Merchant's was really nice and gave us free tickets to a nearby comedy club so we walked on over for that.

The brick walls are all part of that underground I was talking about in the last post... this all used to be street level. And wait I see a familiar face....

The comics were great, and made for a fun end to the night. It was a biiiiiig night out! And we still managed to be in bed by 11pm. That is what I call winning.

Our last day in Seattle we didn't really have any plans so we just decided to wing it. We stopped for breakfast and I got my salmon fix. Bagel and lox, one of my all time favorites. Ed did the ham, egg and cheese you see across the table from me.

Trudged over to the Aquarium which was pretty nice. Boy if you want to test to see if you're ready to have kids? Visit the aquarium on the weekend. Inundated with babies and toddlers and families desperate to stay on top of it all. Either my patience levels are miraculously growing or Seattle has some kind of niceness intoxicant in the air because I just want to pick up all the little ones and give them a biiiiiiig hug.

They also have the largest species of octopus...

Here's the big guy on the move:

And then Ed communicated with some fishies:

This little girl was entranced. She wasn't moving an inch and her dad was patiently waiting by her side.

A distant relative of the grumpy cat:

The next part of the aquarium I didn't enjoy as much. The animals were stunning but the enclosures were.... way too small. Painfully small. The kind of small that makes your heart ache. They are building new habitats as we speak so they are rectifying the problem... I hope.

These guys below were being really active and cute, showing off. I'm glad I got the shot of the one guy in the back diving in, flippers in the air and all!

Argh! I wish you could see the below picture like we were seeing in person. There are a bunch of clouds out there but in between them you could see all the mountains and snow dotting them. It was really beautiful. Lame photo....

We stumbled onto a CSI: Seattle moment....

Yes sir, I think you are my prime suspect!

We then made our way to the art museum... it was pretty neat. The usual. They had a ton of written works and art from Egypt which is one of my favorite times. I used to be fascinated by those organ jars they used when preparing bodies for mummification.

And also we saw this piece and I swear. The women look just like that Judy skit from SNL...

We ended up walking around a bit more, headed over to Le Pichet for lunch, yes, another The Layover pick.

This was about the same size as Walrus and just as crowded. I picked out the quiche special of the day and it was everything I wanted. Light texture, rich taste, crisp top. It was just delicious.

We also tried the smoked trout with creme fraiche, apples and potatoes. I really liked it even though I was a little uncertain about it all.

We went back to the hotel to regroup again, but this time mostly a forced rest because there were no reservations for anywhere open before 9pm. We opted for a sushi place for dinner and I think we sure did choose right. Everything was delicious. We also had the sweetest waitress, named Misty I think, who misplaced our ticket and was worried we had been sitting too long waiting to order. We were absolutely fine and enjoying ourselves and Misty bent over backwards trying to accommodate us which was unbelievably nice of her, going so far as to buy us some edamame and pay for one of our rolls. Little did she know how amazing she was helping to make the end of our trip to Seattle.

I'd tell you what we ordered but all I can remember are names, dishes left to right: The Union, The Barcelona Sunset and The Last Samuri.

We walked around and took it all in one more time, even stopping by the (closed at that hour) flagship Starbucks store.

It was an amazing trip and the absolute best birthday present. I couldn't have asked for more, and I wouldn't hesitate to visit again. If our family lived close to the area it would certainly be on the list of places I would like to live.

Ok, thanks for sticking with me guys, I know this post has been looooong but let me just squeeze in the briefest recap of my actual birthday-day!

Ed got up ridiculously early and made his breakfast casserole which, admittedly, doesn't photograph well, but is hands down right up there as my favorite breakfast. Alongside honeymoon french toast with rum butter of course.

He picked out the sweetest card:

And gave me a fantastic birthday gift. I've been obsessed with this show lately, singing all the songs from it and imagining a future with three very bizarre children.

And for my birthday lunch? Ethiopian! I used to think the bread was gross when I was little but boy have I come around.

The rest of the day was spent on the phone with friends and family, a quick but delightful afternoon nap, and then an evening course sponsored by the community on Personal Emergency Preparedness. I now know what to do in a hazardous material emergency. Ask me the next time you see me!

Thanks for reading this blog guys. I really appreciate the support and interest in our lives. Like I said in the last couple posts, we miss you guys on the east coast a whole bunch and we're hoping that through this blog we'll feel a bit more conencted to you all. Like we haven't been away at all! :)

"I don't know this sea of neon, thousand surfers, whiffs of freon"

Whoops! Had some iPhone troubles (honestly, how many times has this happened to me? Not helping me turn pro-Apple Ms. iPhone, not at all!) so I'm squeezing this post in today instead of this past Monday. We had a biiiiiig holiday weekend. In terms of guests, it was just us and the two furballs. Turkey day was a lovely little hang-around the house day and our dinner was made up of:

- A single turkey breast roasted with an orange brown sugar glaze (Not bad, surprised it had very little of that burnt sugar taste I kind of like)

-Brussel sprouts (plain and simple, no egg or bacon like the delicious Animal version we had with Ck)

-Mashed potatoes. I'm a huge sucker for the traditional, and I'm majorly into that Kerrygold butter right now. I did manage to fall short of the Joel Robuchon levels of butter but that didn't make it any less delicious! Ok maybe just a little less delicious...

-Boxed stuffing and gravy. Yes, embarrassingly lazy but it tasted just fine in that it satisfied our craving and didn't leave us with a huge amount of leftovers. That was essentially our rule of thumb this time around. We two people should only be eating so much so let's not make enough for an army... which is what I would do if left to my own devices!

-Pumpkin pie, cause it ain't a full Turkey day without pie!

- Homemade cranberry sauce. Wait, can I just say how mad I am that I had no idea how easy, cheap and delicious homemade cranberry sauce is? And I'm not talking fancy at all (which I've tried and hated, i.e. last year's disastrous ginger/orange/cranberry slop), I'm talking this recipe right here that made me want to holler into the sky, 'Why did no one tell me about this earlier?!?!' How have I not been doing this all my life? Fellow cranberry lovers, you should adopt this now. Think of all the can-related chemicals you can avoid! And doesn't everyone feel good making things from scratch? Even two ingredient things that are fail proof? Action it people.

We sustained ourselves on season 1 of Modern Family, Abraham Lincoln Vampire Hunter, Seeking a Friend for the End of the World, and Prometheus. Seeking a friend was probably my favorite. Funny, unnerving and thoughtful, I'd recommend it to people that liked The Age of Miracles by Karen Thompson. Good non-bloody or overly dramatic end of the world stories. My favorite line was Connie Britton's response to being called someone's wife days away from the end of humanity: "Nobody's anybody's anything anymore."

Finding ourselves without real plans, we decided we'd finally take a trip down to Monterey to check out some of the sights and enjoy a little tour of the mountains and the coastline. It was pretty much everything we hoped for, including the breath-taking jellyfish exhibition. As you can see from the pictures below, I was overly enamored with Ed's least favorite creature on Earth.

These guys were teeny little circles, about the size of my thumb-nail and dancing around like crazy. The blurry one closest to the camera was puttin' on a show.

There were seahorses in here but they were pissing me off being impossible to photograph. Plus, these little guys were the most beautiful shade of red so I gave them the limelight.

More teeny tiny sea horses! There are 4 on here I think...

These baby sea horses were soooo tiny. I had to hold up my hand for comparison.

These jellyfish just looked like art! It was incredible.

After finishing up at the Aquarium we headed out to check out the bay and Cannery Row shops before making our way to 17 Mile Drive.

Monterey Bay - we live just a little over those mountains in the distance

17-Mile Drive - We actually drove right past the turn for this because fun fact, 17 Mile Drive actually extends into normal neighborhoods before you get to the park part!

If I told you this was called Seal Rock would you believe me? It was noisy!

Poor little lone Cyprus!

I think this picture looks photo-shopped thanks to the light balance differences. What you don't believe we live here? :-P

So, after our lovely little escape down the coast, we came back and decided to try a couple more new things to tie up our holiday weekend.

1. Remedy the 'Rosie is a huge jerk in the morning' problem. Below you can see Rosie's lovely new front claw covers. Don't worry, they aren't painted, they are just vinyl caps glued on with non-toxic glue that fall off in a couple weeks. It has made life so. much. better. And we can play with her a bit more hands on now thanks to her inability to draw blood! She seems to not care one way or another about them but it has been a bit of a learning curve for her and jumping onto fabric things and sliding right off. (Fun fact related to earlier in this post - thanks to Rosie's bad harassing behavior, Ed calls her his 'favorite jellyfish') For some cat vs. dog related humor this made me giggle.

2. Try Psycho Donuts!!!! I've been really excited about this. I'm a big donut person so finding out the Bay Area has it's own little odd donut shop was pretty much the best news ever. We decided to try three different kinds. In the first picture you have "Butter MILF" on the left and "Dessert Island" on the right. In the second picture we have "Strawberry Fields." Dessert Island was hands down my favorite, toasted brown sugar and cinnamon coconut goodness through and through. Ed liked Butter MILF the best. It was pretty delicious - a very Entenmanns like glazed, mini-pound cake of buttermilk and vanilla extract. You had to have a glass of milk with it, there was no way around it. Strawberry fields? Pretty good. I love strawberry donuts, but this one had a bit too much going on for my tastes. I'm kind of a loser when it comes to trying really elaborate stuff. I'll take interesting ingredients (see the sweetbreads and oyster dinner we had the other night - so good I could eat 10 plates of it), but for whatever reason I like some things very simple. I cite our Thanksgiving meal to rest my case. We'll be back for more Psycho Donuts, and yes, I'll be taking many more pictures :)

3. Run. I've started running again and it feels good. I'm still slow and I've been wearing my knee brace and that seems to help. I haven't faced real steep hills or descents which is where my real problems have been lately (and will be on the mountain race....) But I'm staying positive and feeling good.

4. Celebrating my sister's engagement! Joe did reeeeeal good with her ring. I've only seen it through pictures and facetime, but boy is that thing sparkly and gorgeous and perfect for Carolyne. Ck I'm so happy for you! I can't wait to help out in any way you need. Except for planning. That's all you :) But you just wait! Man, I better get on planning your bachelorette party....

Ed's out for a men only weekend away in San Antonio with his friend, so prepare yourself for a Monday post on all the Carly-happy-making-activities! Read: I'll finally go see Twilight :)