The first day of our first (and only) Seattle house hunting trip started with our waking up at 4:45 am for our 7:00 am flight. Jeannie West, who kindly agreed to drive us to the airport at that ungodly hour, was chipper and energetic as usual and spent most of the drive telling us about her friend who has a ranch in Washington state and who lectures about alien abductions for a living. My mom has awesome friends.

As soon as we arrived at the airport, we were informed that our 7 am flight had been cancelled and we were being bumped to the 8:oo am flight. We had a pretty flexible schedule that day, so it didn’t mess up our timing, but I did have a hard time getting over the fact that we could have slept a whole hour longer. ug.

After an uneventful plane ride we arrived at the W Hotel in downtown Seattle, quickly unloaded our bags and began the apartment search. After looking at possibilities in the International District, Downtown, Capitol Hill and Queen Anne, we hadn’t fallen in love with any one place, but we both agreed that our favorite neighborhood was Queen Anne. The only problem was that we didn’t love any of the 4 apartments we saw there: the 1st was cramped and had no parking; the 2nd (the best of the day) was too far from the neighborhood’s main drag; the 3rd ended up being $800 more a month than we wanted to spend; and the 4th, which billed itself as “historical,” looked like it hadn’t even been painted since the mid-1960s. We were a bit disappointed, so we decided to drown our sorrows in Thai food.

Mike had pad thai, I had chicken curry with brown rice (my pictures came out blurry though. arg). The curry was better. In fact, my food was better during every meal we had in Seattle. If you have ever had the pleasure of eating out with Mike, you probably already know that he always likes other peoples’ food better than his own. Next time you go out to dinner with Mike, do him a favor and just order for him.

This is when I discovered what Mike had warned me about when he flew up last month to interview—the sun doesn’t go down here until almost 10 o’ clock! We took this picture at 9:15 pm. This will definitely take some getting used to.