Hello everyone,
The
football was well and truly worth staying up for last night. After being
down by five goals at 3/4 time, we kicked seven unanswered goals in the
last quarter to win by 13 points. Amazing! The chocolate thickshake
worked again haha.
We slept
in this morning as I was up until 2am due to the game and then post
match excitement (quiet excitement though as Rob was asleep). We set off
at 10am and walked to the Pike Place Market for a foodie tour we had
booked. Founded in 1907, Pike Place Market is the oldest continually
operating market in the USA, even remaining open during the pandemic to a
degree. It was started by a group of farmers who were sick of selling
their goods onto wholesalers that would then mark them up a lot to make a profit and
instead decided to sell direct to the public. The first day, eight
farmers came and sold out of their goods. The next day, 70 farmers came.
Today, there are more than 200 stores and restaurants in the area that
take in over $200 million collectively every year. We walked past the
first ever Starbucks which had a huge queue out the door. Again, we
aren’t fans of their coffee, but it was interesting to hear it started
up in Seattle.
Our guide
was called Jonathon and he’s lived in Seattle for five years now but is
from Toronto. So the 11 degree weather was “warm” for him, and he was in
shorts and a T shirt while Rob and I had jeans and coats on! He was
great and led us around the market giving us information and taking us
to different places for tastings.
The places we stopped and what we ate were:
- Beecher’s Cheese: Cheese curds and some of their cheddar which was delicious. We then tried some yummy mac and cheese.
- Maìz Tacos: Chicken tacos with a yummy salsa and salad.
- Totem Smokehouse: Salmon maple jerky.
- Pike Place Chowder: The best seafood chowder I’ve had in my life.
- Pizza & Pasta Bar: Margherita pizza.
- Made in Washington: Salmon with different herbs and oils like a dip, then cinnamon orange tea.
- O-Mart: Filipino food. Mango juice followed by a yummy mini spring roll and sausage.
- Market Grill: Wild caught grilled salmon with some seasoning (amazing!).
- Truffle Queen: Some truffle salt, sundried tomato dip with truffle oil, mushrooms and truffle and a pistachio cream (these were all separate).
- Chukar Cherries: Different types of coatings on delicious cherries such as chocolate.
We
really enjoyed the tour and the food. The market was thriving but
apparently will be a lot busier starting in the next few weeks due to
cruise ships visiting during the summer months. I’m glad we won’t be
here then as thousands of people come off the ship each day and
everything gets very crowded, as I’ve seen in cities in Europe.We
walked around the market after the tour and bought a hot apple cider
and some more of the cherries. We had also seen some of the fish mongers
throwing fish in the marketplace, which is apparently famous at the
market here, as well as Rachel the pig, a piggy bank statue that people
put money into that is donated to the upkeep of the market.
After
leaving the market we headed to the ferry terminal to catch a ferry
across to Bainbridge Island. The ferry is another Seattle icon, and
another icon for any of you familiar with ‘Grey’s Anatomy’. Derek
Shepherd loves ferry boats and there are a few sunny scenes of him on
them in the final episode he appears in. We were lucky and had the same
weather as he did, the grey clouds cleared in the afternoon and we were treated to
sunshine and clear skies again. We could even see some mountains behind
the city skyline with snow on them. Mt Rainier was particularly
impressive. It looked a lot like Mt Fuji!
Washington
has the largest ferry system of any state in the USA. The ferry crossed
Puget Sound to get to the island, and apparently within the Sound there
is a lot of wildlife such as different types of salmon, dolphins,
seals, sea lions and even 75 orcas that reside here. 110 more visit on
their commute to Alaska each year during spring too. Sadly, we didn’t
see anything like that today, but we will have another opportunity in
Vancouver soon. The ferry
ride was lovely and I found it sweet that a few men coming home from
work in Seattle had picked up flowers for someone from the market to
bring home to them. Once we exited the ferry, we walked around the little town
there called Winslow which was cute, and particularly enjoyed a harbour side path where we saw lots of boats and flowers. We then headed
back to Seattle and Rob bought some new Vans shoes, and then we returned
to the cheese place and Mexican place from the tour and shared a few
small things for dinner.
We’ve
had a wonderful time here. We haven’t been impacted at all by any rain
and even had lots of unexpected sunshine. The tours we’ve done have been
interesting and the bike paths have allowed us to ride back to our hotel
each day easily which we enjoyed. Our hotel has been great, the last
photo today is of the lobby. Tomorrow
we are off to Vancouver, and we will be in Canada for the next three
weeks before we return to the USA again towards the end of our trip.
Love to all
Claire
Xoxox
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