Seattle, WA

The weather was nice enough that we were again able to cruise up top for the 60 nm from La Conner to Seattle, WA.  I had reserved a prime slip at the Bell Harbor Marina right downtown and just a few blocks away from Pike’s Market.  Thus not surprisingly the Market was our first destination for the day where we ate lunch at Etta’s just outside the entry.  Right after lunch Janette and Pete needed to depart for the airport.  While Timi, Nancy and John planned to spend the afternoon shopping, I headed back to the boat to meet a craftsman I had flown out from Ft. Lauderdale to repair some dings in the boat’s high gloss woodwork and address a little mishap which occurred during the shipping from FL.  He has a unique skill where he melts acrylic sticks to repair a ding in the woodwork or flooring making a permanent undetectable repair.  That took most of the afternoon but he was able to finish in time before Anne and Jim Cashman, my estate attorney and his wife joined us for cocktails.  They have a home in Gig Harbor and took the ferry over to see us.  They had to pick up their daughter at the airport and thus were unable to join us for our wonderful dinner at the Pink Door.  

On our second day in Seattle Rick and Jody Knauf flew in to join us taking the O’Campo’s place on the boat.  And after getting them settled, it was time for a private bike tour I had scheduled around downtown Seattle stretching from the Seattle Center all way to Pioneer Square.  This proved to be both fun and informative as we learned both about the history and the current happenings in the City including Amazon’s growing presence.  Thereafter we had noticed when researching things to do in Seattle that there were “escape houses” downtown.  Escape houses are a series rooms where you need to solve many clues or puzzles to move on to the next room with the goal of solving the final puzzle/opening the final door before your time expires.  While we did not make it out of the final room at the Locario Escape House, we did get through two the rooms and were about halfway through the final one before our time expired.  We thought the concept was fun and would do it again.  The day concluded with dinner at Taviolata.

Our plan was to leave Seattle today, Wednesday, but there is so much to see and do in Seattle we decided to stay one more day and celebrate Timi’s birthday in Seattle tonight.  After a busy day yesterday we had a leisurely morning which included some birthday jewelry shopping for Timi followed by lunch at the Steelhead Diner at the entrance to Pike’s Market.  More shopping and exploring was following by a birthday bar crawl of Mr. Darcy’s, the Unicorn, the Narwhal and finally dinner at a classic Italian restaurant called Vito’s.