November 23-25, 2017
Thanksgiving
This year for Thanksgiving, we were all on our own! We missed being with family, but also enjoyed the nice break it gave us from work and school. (Nick only had Friday off, so traveling to family would have been tough considering the tight timing!)
We decided to do a casual dinner, and then planned a trip to Seattle on Friday and Saturday. We really enjoyed it, even with the constant gray rain.
Our dinner was really good, especially for being our first time making it on our own! That said, we did just pick up a chicken from Costco as the meat, so that made things pretty simple. Nick made really good mashed potatoes and pan-fried asparagus, I made a raspberry pear salad and homemade rolls- my first time ever! Nick was much better at kneading the dough, but I tried to learn. We both had different ideas of how to shape the rolls- my mom does knots, his mom does balls, etc.- but they turned out to be yummy regardless of their shape. Overall, it was a dinner we were proud of and grateful to have.
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| Nick wants everyone to notice his bicep in this picture.... |
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| We went for a walk around the river downtown. It was a little chilly, but beautiful! Portland is known as the city of bridges, we crossed two but passed 5 or 6. |
Seattle
On Friday, we started out for Seattle. From my research, we found that the Citypass was going to be the best deal for us to see everything we wanted too! It was a discounted rate for the Space Needle, the Chihuly glass museum, the Museum of Pop and Culture, the Aquarium and harbor tour. Unfortunately, when I went to purchase the passes, I got confused on the Space needle website and accidentally purchased a similar but different (and more expensive) pass! It was a bad moment. But, I called them, left a message, and waited/prayed they would give us a refund. Fortunately they did! So we were able to get the right pass before we even got into the city. I was very grateful it worked out, and Nick was really nice about the whole thing!
So when we got there, we headed to the Space Needle to get tickets for going to the top, then went to the glass museum in the mean time. It was an incredible museum!! Really spectacular work and pieces. I loved Chihuly's creativity with the medium. They had a demonstration of how they create glass blown pieces, which helped us appreciate Chihuly so much more! Only downside was that the demonstration was outside in the rain, but that's Seattle for you!
Then we ran over to the Space Needle and went up! It's a glass elevator, which I was not a fan of. Heights are hard for me, but not so much once I'm on top of whatever thing it is I'm climbing. So I just kept my eyes closed :) The Needle was under construction, so we could only walk around half of the Observation deck unfortunately. But, it still had some neat views of the city, and we loved learning about how and why it was constructed. It only took something like six months, and not a single person was injured or killed during its construction! They said they finished it just hours before the opening of the Worlds Fair the next day! (Later, we learned that Nick's mom had been at that Worlds Fair, in 1962!).
By this point we were pretty hungry so we hung around the gift shop while we tried to find a place to eat (remember it was raining and cold outside!). We eventually decided on a Thai place that was close (we always decide on Thai, don't know why it's always such a process to figure it out...), and headed over. It was pretty good and a nice break from the weather. Then we headed back out through the park to the Museum of Pop and Culture aka the MoPop.
It was quite the experience!! The MoPop is an incredible building, huge sheets of blue and pink metal on the outside, in a strange wave shape. We got there pretty late, so we did the museum pretty quick. The highlights definitely included the instrument tornado, the Macklemore interview on a huge screen, the weird David Bowie exhibit (seriously we had no idea how weird he was), and the Star Wars light sabers, and the six fingered glove from Princess Bride! It was fun, but we were tired and made it quick. (There was also a ton of Dr.Who stuff, my mom would’ve loved it!)
We then walked back to our car a few blocks away and drove on to our AirBnB, which was great! First time we stayed somewhere that the host also lived, so that was different but hilarious too.
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| The 6-fingered glove from Princess Bride! And their swords. |
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| This was so neat. It's one of the sand people costumes from Star Wars- it was such simple material! |
The next morning, we went and explored Pikes Place market, which we loved!! We walked by some incredible gingerbread displays on our way there which was neat. We grabbed some pastries for breakfast at a delicious bakery near the very first Starbucks. The patties were incredible- we had an apple cinnamon roll which we liked too. We spent some time walking through all the different stalls- food, fruit, chocolate, flowers (these were amazing), blankets, art, woodworking, ornaments, and of course fish (and crabs, shrimp, octopus, etc.)! We walked through several of the buildings, ran into the infamous throwing of the fish, then made our way down to the waterfront.
We grabbed tickets for a boat tour of the Puget Sound (part of the city pass) then walked through the Aquarium. We’ve seen several aquariums lately, so we didn’t spend too much time here, but still enjoyed learning about the animals in the region.
We walked back up to the market for lunch before the boat tour, and ate at a great place! It has a nice view over the harbor and was really yummy (we had fish tacos and soup). After we warmed up and dried off, we went back to the boat place for the tour. Nick ran to the bathroom while I held our place in line- he barely made it as I was stepping onto the boat, typical Nick...
The cruise was nice, but wet. We stayed inside most of the time but enjoyed the tour guides commentary. Nick took a nap, and I snapped some pictures here and there. It was a good way to learn about Seattle!
After the cruise we were soaked and tired and still had a three hour drive back, so we started on our way. It was a long and rainy drive back, but we had a great time and were so glad we went.
