Seattle, WA
I was picked up at the Seattle airport by a very enthusiastic duo, and when I jumped in the car I was greeted with lots of excitement and sniffs! The gang was back together!
We went straight to the AirBnB we had rented in the Ballard Neighborhood off a tip that it was a “hip area.” It was! We were in a nice residential area with lots of cool shops and restaurants just a block away.
The place itself was a large 2 bedroom apartment and had funny notes all over to remind us how to behave. We enjoyed having such a good amount of space and a little side yard to let the dog out at night. Also in the yard were a couple great airstream trailers! Unfortunately we weren't able to check those out during our stay.
Mike and I were both pretty drained from our week of extensive solo traveling so we decided early on to take it easy in Seattle, recuperate, and get back into the swing of things.
We started out by meeting up with our friends Rylan and Rian who moved out to Seattle in August. We had a great dinner at the Brave Horse Tavern catching up and enjoying the famous Impossible veggie burger!
For those who don’t know - what makes the Impossible Burger unlike all other veggie burgers is an ingredient called heme. Heme is a basic building block of life on Earth, including plants, but it’s uniquely abundant in meat. They discovered that heme is what makes meat smell, sizzle, bleed, and taste meaty. It is the “magic ingredient” that makes the Impossible burger smell, cook, look, feel, and most importantly taste like a meat burger.
This burger was unbelievable - it was the best burger I’ve ever had in my life. Even the meat eaters were sold! Unfortunately, we were too busy enjoying ourselves that we forgot to take a photo. I wish we had one of our friends, but here's a pic (from google) of the burger.
Having never been to Seattle previously, I was prepared for what I had seen in the movies - a gray rainy city with lots of independent shops, great coffee, and a thriving underground music scene. Honestly, that’s what it was! And that was awesome! Side note for the critics - yes, it was winter when we visited, and in the summer it is said to be sunny and green and beautiful.
We thought it would only be fitting to catch a concert, and Mike had heard that the band Superchunk would be playing a show promoting their new album while we were there. We had been listening to some of their new stuff on SiriXMU and knew it would be fun to see them live so we headed to the show at Neumos after dinner!
These guys have been playing since the early 90’s and know how to put on a great performance. It was super high energy and would have been hard not to dance and jump around with the lead singer. The crowd was loving it, and it was just what Mike and I needed to get pumped up for the second half of our trip together!
During the day we toured around checking out restaurants and shops in our neighborhood, a nice dog park on a hill, the gasworks park on the water, and of course - the Fremont Troll!
Then we dropped Merlin off and headed into the city to check out the Starbucks Roastery. This place was beautiful with warm wood accents contrasted by shiny copper industrial equipment. It smelled delicious.
They had lots of exclusive coffees, baked goods, a bar, and a brick oven pizza counter! We aren’t into tourist traps but, on the weekday that we were there, this place was big enough to handle the crowd and just felt like a giant coffee shop.
We enjoyed a coffee, coffee float with vanilla ice cream, and pastry at a quiet table in the back.
Tired out from a busy day we decided to stay in and order pizza. Sadly, Seattle really let us down when we ordered a Margherita pie and received this sauceless atrocity.
We went to bed reminiscing about our old Brooklyn neighborhood Motorino pizza and looking forward to seeing Mike’s family in Portland!
