Saturday, September 24th, 2016, Seattle Run Around Shenanigans, Pre-Bachelor Party
Justin is a professional planner; I'm pretty sure he would plan his bathroom breaks for the week if his bladder would cooperate. The plus side of this is that even when he's mid Bachelor Party and a handful of drink in, he still has the awareness to check in with me to see if I've landed at SEATAC airport. Yeah, I landed Justin, I'm jumping on the Light Rail and will check into the hotel and will head to meet up with you guys. There's just a slight problem with that, I get distracted easi... LOOK, SQUIRREL!!!
Its midday saturday and it is an absolutely gorgeous day and I'm not in any particular rush so I decide to take the Seattle monorail from the end of the Light Rail which is in the Westlake Center, to the Seattle Center which is where the Rock n Roll Museum and the Space Needle is. Totally fine except that the monorail is cash only! WTF Seattle, its not hipster to accept cash only, knock it off. Get paypal or venmo or square or a monorail card! Stop making me carry change in my pockets, even if they are super shiny and new quarters. Rant over.
Okay, so I'm done with public transportation for now and its just a short walk from the monorail, through the Seattle Center, to the Sheraton Four Points. The problem is, there is a ton to see and do in the Seattle Center. The monorail even has a direct entrance into the Armory which is a collection of, make me super hunger because it smells amazing, restaurants. But the dagger for me was the Italian festival complete with meatball sammiches, pasta, pizza, and cooking demos.
My bad Justin, I had to eat though... and sight-see.
Sunday, September 25th, 2016, Recovery Day...
Full disclosure, I got totally sick the night before I flew out. I think there was a window open with a cold breeze or something. So in a panic, I remember my mom saying something about taking thousands of mg of vitamin C a day, sleeping alot, and drinking lots of water. I was definitely worried that I would be too sick for the wedding, the welcome party, or any Seattle shenanigans so I decided that I would try to sneak in some downtime. But first, Alex and I did breakfast, walked through the Seattle center, then caught an Uber to Gasworks Park. The old gas facility sits on the North Shore of Lake Union, and from the water it looks like all the equipment is really rusty. However if you actually go up close to the tanks, ladders, and pipes, you will see that everything is just painted brown. LIARS! There's also a building off to the side that has a bunch of old machinery inside of it that is painted bold colors also. Unfortunately, it also serves as a homeless hideout and it took us by surprise to see them hidden in different corners of the building. Fortunately there is plans for this whole area to be turned into a social area with restaurants, bars, and shops in the next year. I bet its gonna be a pretty popular area to hang out.
Alex has bachelorette brunch and painting responsibilities and I am left on my own to chase down lunch and meds. Sometime during the bachelor party, one of the guys tells me about a cuban sammich that is supposed to be out of this world. The restaurant is called Paseao's Cuban Food and is not far from where I am. The cuban special itself is loaded with slow roasted pork, grilled onions, and a picante sauce that is very nice. The whole thing is very messy and drippy, a great sign. If you go, share it with someone, its way too big for one person, unless you've got something to prove.
I stumble by a record store and decide to peruse their selection. I end up buying the record that is playing in the store, Earth, Wind & Fire's Greatest Hits. The guy running the store touted it as his favorite sunday morning album and I was surprised when he turned down the music, took the record off the turntable, put it into its sleeve and handed it to me. I guess it was their only copy. Its is now touted as my favorite Earth, Wind & Fire album to play when I play Earth, Wind, & Fire albums, because its the only one that I have, but its still my favorite.
Okay, enough messing around. Go find a bank to get wedding present money, a card to put it in, gift wrap to wrap the wedding present that I brought, and some freaking meds for the snot that is running 26.2 miles in my nose. But first... graffiti, lol. I love that in every city, there is some really great graffiti. These pieces were on the side of a wine store; I really like that they took the time to give it a colored background. The rest of my afternoon was sleeping and watching bad movies and even worse commercials on cable until Alex came back to head to the Out-of-towners Welcome Party at Justin and Morgan's house in Edmonds.
Monday, September 26, 2016, Pre-Wedding Shenanigans
If you ever travel, you know that every city has a must see tourist attraction. Los Angeles has Hollywood, Sunset Blvd, Venice Beach; Chicago has Cloudgate Park with the Bean and the Art Museum; Seattle has the space needle and Pike's Market. The market itself is famed for its animated sale of fish, oysters, crabs, and other seafood. Their spin on the typical sale is to throw full sized salmon across crowds of people; its more of a show than anything else. But within the walls of the marketplace and around the surrounding area are all super niche shops and restaurants and the first Starbucks. I took Alex to Beecher's who makes fresh cheese's and has a display where you can watch how fresh cheese curd is made. I'll stand in line for some free cheese man, so will my mom. My favorite place is just a couple doors down, Pirosky's. A Pirosky is a Russian baked pastry that is either sweet or savory. We got one of each to share; faaaaaaantastic. Get some culture and try it next time you're at Pike's. Also, if you have a passion for tater tots and whiskey like I do, you can head up to the third floor to Radiator Whiskey's where they rebarrel whiskey's to give them a unique flavor and they have a truffle tater tot appetizer that is topped with a fried egg. Its as amazing as it sounds. A few steps away is a rooftop garden with a view of the coast. Directly below was the chewing gum wall just outside the movie theater; the alley was closed for cleaning while we were there, I wonder who decided that it would be a good idea to not clean the gum off the wall.
Since it's been about an hour since we last ate, I convinced Alex that it was time to eat again. We found one of the many sets of stairs that take you from the marketplace down to the pier and the aquarium and set our sights for my favorite place to get oysters in Seattle, Elliots. If you come during happy hour, which used to start at 3:00, you can get select oysters for 25 cents a pop; no joke. It goes up a quater every 15 or 30 minutes or so, but still, you can't beat that with kitchen aid stand mixer. I mean, how would you even put something that's non-tangible into a bowl and expect to be able to beat it. A mystery for the ages. As you ponder that semi philosophical and semi retarded statement, Alex and I head back to get gussied up for the wedding.
Tuesday, September 27th, 2016, Post Wedding Shenanigans
In trying to decide when to book hotels and flights for this wedding, Alex and I realized that each day we would be in town was dictated by wedding activities and that we really didn't have a ton of time to get out into much of the city. The solution? Work remotely and spend another day in Seattle.
But first, let's eat! We down selected our cuisine options to seafood with pancakes; what we found that was within walking distance was a Creole/brunch restaurant, Toulouse Petit, which had a couple thousand reviews on yelp and a 4 star rating. Bingo! As Alex and I walked to the restaurant, she goes, "You know that brunch place that Morgan was supposed to have her brides wedding brunch at is right around this area. She had to change venues because she was told that the restaurant had an e. coli breakout. I wonder if this is the same place." It was. The sign read 'Closed for Maintenance'. Yeah, right, uh-huh.
We got fish burritos instead and headed back to the Seattle Center to see some of the less obvious art installations. Instead, we found a pretty wicked playground with a really big rope jungle gym, massive musical instruments, and a big orange circular maze. "That's neat, I wonder if it hard to do." "Let's find out!" Yeah, so 17 minutes later, we complete said maze, which was really just a single winding path; but we did the whole thing and made everyone who watched us do it really really jealous. Not alot of people can say that they successfully completed the maze in the Seattle Center, we're pretty much celebrities.
The last picture is basically a giant set of chimes that you play by smacking a billiard ball that is suspended by the pipe. Alex's played the chromatic scale followed shortly by a Justin Beiber Medley.
Its time to step up our art game and go the the Chihuly Garden and Glass installation. The artist is Dale Chihuly; he's the one that did the blown glass display in the lobby of the Bellagio. Its so fancy that they used it in a scene in Ocean's 11. Go watch it, then go to Vegas, then call me and tell me to meet you. If you do, I'll do my super special "I'm going to Vegas" dance. It the same dance as my "I'm eating really really good food" dance.
The museum itself is dedicated to his major bodies of work and there's a section with movies about the installations he's done all around the world. Its incredibly impressive and it makes for stunning photos. I recently was helping Holly move into a family friends house and she had one of his pieces in one of her many living rooms. It was the size of a dinner plate, and from the gift store at the museum, I knew that it was around $18,000. BALLER! I did my best to parse down the photos, but I was so impressed by them, it was hard to tell some of the pictures that they don't get to pass go, they don't get to collect $200, and that they had to go straight to jail. But I'm a man... I did it... I told them what's up... after some negotiating.
Tell me that this picture isn't bad-ass. Yeah, this is going up on the wall.
The beauty of simplicity, and super photogenic people; I've warned you pretty people in previous blog posts, the beat down is coming. :p
Alex and I played the "What would you do?" game in the outdoor section of the museum. There is a bunch of different glass installations throughout the garden; the game was, if you only got one type of blown glass to put in your super baller backyard, which would it be? I totally forgot what we chose, I can thank my crappy memory for that; but which would you choose?
Alex is a giant art buff, she's got guns like 'The Rock' Dwayne Johnson or like the NRA, you pick your analogy. Over by the coast is another outdoor art installation; you walk down a path as it zig zags through a park and there are various installations along the way. I was surprised to see how much I enjoyed them, especially the train filled with charcoal at the end of the path. I told Alex that it was Santa's train and he was getting ready to dish out some hurt and disappointment this year. She ignored me; I don't get why she doesn't take me seriously, ever.
We headed back for dinner with the great Zac El-Rico Hocking who is engaged to Christina and has plans for their wedding sometime late 2017. Finished the night with a couple drinks and got ready for my stupid early flight the next morning so I didn't have to miss anymore work.
Thanks Seattle, Justin and Morgan for the good times. Alex and I enjoyed playing hippie or homeless throughout the entire trip. :D
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