Saturday was Amy and Derek’s last full day in Seattle, so we made it a point to pack in as many activities as possible.  I think we succeeded.  I was certainly exhausted by the end of the day.

The day started early, at least according to Mike time- we were all out the door before 11:00 AM.  Since Mike is a world champion sleeper-inner, Amy, Derek and I had already had time to walk down the street to grab some coffee and check out some pretty impressive foam art:

Once Mike was conscious and clean, we headed over to Pike’s Place Market, where we had a decent lunch with an amazing view at Lowell’s:

We also bought Mike’s mom a salmon (it’s the only souvenir she would ever actually use):

Once the Market was checked off our list, we made our way to another huge tourist attraction in Seattle, The Experience Music Project.  This was actually really cool- it features all kinds of cool stations where you can learn about Seattle’s musical heritage through every sense imaginable.  Plus, we took advantage of Mike’s fancy Microsoft Discount AND two free tickets he had gotten from a friend, so the whole afternoon only cost us $10!

The building was designed by Frank Gehry, if you couldn’t guess.

The tower of guitars is really impressive.

One of the most popular features of the EMP is a section where they have all kinds of musical instruments and tools for anybody to play, even if you have zero musical ability whatsoever (like myself).  We played with keyboards, drums, guitars and even a mixing board, but I was most excited about the turntables.

Um, needless to say, I couldn’t even successfully match the tempos on the pretend turntable.  I am officially the whitest white girl on the planet.

Mike did much better when he took over.  If we ever decide to become a musical duo of any sorts, I’ll just have to be the hype-man.  I can’t make music, but I am damn good at encouraging people.

Another section of the EMP is a compilation of thousands of hours of interviews and monologues of all kinds of people involved in the Seattle music scene over the years.  While poking around, I found Mike McCready‘s interview and naturally had to take a picture with his virtual self:

Randomly, my mom is besties with his wife.  When he gave her a Pearl Jam CD, she told him that their music was okay, but she couldn’t understand what their lead singer was saying.  I love my mom.

Right next to the oral history compilation, Mike found his favorite thing in the entire freaking museum, the egg chair:

After we finally wrested Mike from the grips of the very soothing musical egg chair, we finished our tour of the museum and checked out the Science Fiction Museum, which is attached to the EMP and included with the price of admission.  There were some cool/kitchy alien and robot stuff, but we didn’t get any pictures because they are really strict about photography.  Boo to them.

We then spent some time wandering around the Seattle Center.  We were all too cheap to go to the top of the Space Needle, but we did take pictures in front of it:

We finished the day with dinner and drinks at Boom Noodle in Capitol Hill.  I had gone there with Justin the week before, and we liked it.  Derek is a conisseur of ramen, so I wanted to take him there to try it.  It’s not the most authentic ramen in the universe, but it’s decent, and they have really good gyoza and a cute, modern decor.

I had mussels for the first time.  They look scary but taste delicious.  Yay mussels! I also made Amy stick the pretty pink sake bottle in her purse so I could bring it home and use it as a vase.  I’m nothing if not classy.

We finished the night by going home, where we got our domestic on by making homemade Nilla Wafers and eating ice cream.  Cookies are always a good way to finish a day.

Awww, my dear friend Anne just posted this on her blog, and I have honestly never felt more loved by my friends than I do right now.

And strangely enough, I did wake up with a headache last Sunday morning.

Between Justin, Amy and Derek, we had 10 solid days of entertaining out of town guests.  Thankfully, Seattle has a lot of things to do to aid us in this task.  Evidently, we constructed some sort of “pop art” theme when we planned out what to do to keep Amy and Derek entertained.

On Friday, while Mike worked from home in the afternoon, the three of us went to check out the Great Seattle Graffiti Wall.  Amy, our resident photographer and art aficionado, had specially requested that we check this out during their trip.

Finding it was kind of a pain.  I had tried to Google it, but I kept getting different intersections, so we ended up driving around aimlessly for an extra 20 minutes.  When we finally found it (we finally noticed a graffiti-covered wall at 3rd Ave S and S Stacey Street) we were thrilled!  Derek and I were even more thrilled because it was right by a McDonalds, so I could feed my Diet Coke addiction and he could snack on some Chicken McNuggets.  (Seriously, Derek loves chain and fast food more than anybody ever in the history of the universe.  It’s comical, but it’s also comforting, because I love Derek).

After Derek’s snack, we proceded to do exactly what you are supposed to do when you see a giant wall of brightly-colored legal graffiti: we took pictures of ourselves!

Uncle Dung!

Derek giving me a boost.  I know you’re marveling at my grace.

Sister act!

I actually really like this picture.

Amy had tried to get us to take a group shot using her camera timer.  We ran away just before the camera went off.  She was irked.

Finally, a semi-successful group shot.

Amy took video to get a picture of the entire wall if you want to check it out (warning: you can hear a lot of wind in the background):

After spending an hour or so jumping up on walls that were covered in bum pee, posing like giant nerds and marvelling at the wall in general, we were cold and hungry and ready to go clean up before getting dinner at Lunchbox Laboratory in Ballard.  I was really excited to try this restaurant out- it is a build-your-own-burger place (a lot like The Counter in SoCal, only with a wider variety of meat and a decidedly less bourgoise feel).

There were definitely a LOT of choices, which Mike found a bit overwhelming.  We both said we’d like to try it again, but The Counter ekes out the win in head to head burger competition.  Mike and I split a Butterfinger Shake though, which we agreed was the best milkshake ever.

The smile is Derek’s seal of approval.

As awesome as Mike and I are, this latest crop of visitors didn’t fly all the way up here just to see our shining faces.  In fact, the main reason that Amy and Derek came to Seattle was to see The Stars.

The Stars were playing at The Showbox at the Market, right by Pike’s Place Market.  What a great venue!  It held a good amount of people but still felt intimate.  Plus, for the lazy amongst us (ie Mike and I), they had plenty of tables around the bar that allowed us to sit down and still have a great view of the concert the entire time.

We started off all sitting at the table, where Mike and Derek engaged in some fascinating conversation:

Most of their conversations seem to center around their mutual love of computers, mountain bikes and chain restaurants.  God, how I had missed listening to it all.

None of us had ever heard of the opening band, Think About Life, before, but I immediately developed a crush on their lead singer.  Amy, our official photographer, failed to take a picture of my future husband, but here is one I stole from Google Images:

He was wearing a bow tie last night, which made him even more awesome.

Then The Stars took the stage!  Yay!

I really hope that this was a good omen for future musically themed outings.  Their playlist included Amy and Torquil, the lead singers, kept me thoroughly entertained even though I have the shortest attention span for music EVER.

The pretty flashing lights probably helped up the entertainment value too:

Yay for living in a city with such a great music scene!

On Wednesday at 2:00 pm, we bid adieu to Justin.

On Thursday, we said hello to them:

Yay!  Amy and Derek are here!  The girl Bach and the white Bach!

Many adventures to be recapped tomorrow.

If you ever come visit me, I will spend a lot of time trying to feed you, as witnessed in my previous post chronicling the many meals that Justin, Mike and I consumed during Justin’s recent trip to Seattle.  But there are other things to do with me besides having me shove food down your throat.  Thankfully, Justin was a good sport and we actually got the chance to see quite a few things in the city.

I’ve already chronicled Friday and Saturday.  On Sunday, the boys spent the first half of the day at the Colonade riding their bikes off of giant ramps and boulders and other dangerous things.  Hopefully Mike will post some pictures of their awesomeness soon.

When they got back, we continued the generally sporty theme of the day by checking out the flagship REI store.  It’s just so…  big.  Here we marvelled at kayaks, bike racks and some very involved baby-backpacks.  Justin and I decided that we are organizing an epic camping trip as soon as the weather warms up again, and Mike kept talking about how he needs to buy the WASP knife before we go to protect us all from bears:

After REI we drove to the Capitol Hill neighborhood and climbed the Volunteer Park Water Tower. Justin used his schmancy new camera to take some pretty pictures of the cityscape, while Mike, obviously exhausted from the stair climb, did this:

On Monday, when Mike went to work Justin and I hopped on our bikes and rode to check out the Ballard Locks.  This was very exciting, because every time I had asked Justin what he wanted to see in Seattle, his only answer was “Salmon.”  So here, we saw salmon.

We also saw seals (eating the salmon) and a very big boat come through the Locks!  You can tell that Justin really is an engineer by how incredibly fascinated he was by this process:

On our ride home, the gray-but-dry weather turned into a torrential downpour.  We kept joking that this was his “iconically Seattle” experience of the week.  This is what we looked like by the time we got home:

On Tuesday the weather was much better, so we checked out Kerry Park, did the Seattle Underground Tour (we had to do something super-touristy before he left), and finished off the daylight with a hike through Discovery Park:

On Tuesday morning, we bid adieu to our awesome friend.  We were sad to see him go, but we hope he has a good time visiting Portland!  Justin, you (and your bike) were definitely the best guest(s) we’ve ever had in Seattle!

He carries a really big purse.

Since we’ve moved to Seattle, I’ve been cooking up a storm.  Not a perfect storm, but a storm nonetheless.  In fact, I’ve been cooking so much that we’ve cut our usually frequent habit of eating out down to once or twice a week.  It’s generally a good thing- my food has gotten better and it is much cheaper.

However, since our friend Justin came to visit us last Thursday, all that has gone out the window.

Having somebody from back home visit us has been an excuse to try all kinds of deliciousness that we’ve put off in the past couple of months, as well as revisit a few favorites.  It’s been fun, because as Justin and I have discussed at length, food up here is awesome.  We can’t figure out if it’s the general lack of chain restaurants or the general emphasis on quality ingredients, but there is definitely something wonderful about eating in Seattle.  Here is a summary of what we’ve devoured since Justin arrived:

• Dinner at Peso’s: This Mexican/tapas place is down the hill from us.  It’s a little clubby/yuppie feeling, but they have a great late-night happy hour.  We dug the crab cakes and sangria.  Yum.
• Beecher’s Handmade Cheese: Best Mac and Cheese I’ve ever had.  And I love cheese.
• Ramen at Boom Noodle: Ramen + Happy Hour = delicious.
• Dinner at Flying Fish: Good seafood, great wine.  Mike had a black coconut risotto that I wanted to crawl inside of and eat my way out of.
• Pho Viet Anh: Our new pho place.
• Dad Watson’s: I didn’t love my Mac and Cheese here, but Justin liked his stuffed burger so much that we took a picture of it:

• Thai Kitchen in Queen Anne:  Everybody loved the Panang Curry.  This was a fortunate accident, since we had originally intended to go to a different Thai restaurant near our house, but they closed early.  Bad for them, good for us.  I think this is when Mike first declared that he could eat Thai food every day if he had to.
• MAD Pizza: We wandered in here on a whim before exploring the giant REI.  The pizza was good, but the so-called “half salads” were even better.  A pleasant surprise.
• Chinoise Cafe: This is an odd little restaurant that has a little bit of every kind of Asian cuisine.  If you can’t decide what you want to eat, you can come here, have a bowl of pho, some fried rice, walnut shrimp and a side of kim chi and be incredibly happy.  When the bill came, we were all pleasantly surprised at how little it cost.  This is the kind of restaurant you would want right by your house.  In our case, it is right by our house.  Awesome.
• The Other Coast Cafe: Justin said this was the best hot sandwhich he had ever had.  Enough said.
• Phuket: Yes, more Thai food.  We can’t help it, there is a glut of Thai food in this city.  Mike loves this place because the Pad Thai isn’t too sweet.
• Skillet Street Food: I was sooo excited to finally eat at this roving gourmet food truck.  Best french fries I’ve ever had, plus everything was really reasonably price.
• Ivar’s Salmon House: Eh, this was a little disapointing, especially because it was our last meal together before Justin goes home tomorrow.  The highlight of the meal was when we found out that Mike, not wanting to offend our waiter, had tried to hide all of the fish and chips that he didn’t eat:

This is one of the reasons I love him.  Weirdo.

Mike and I have extremely different philosophies when it comes to travel and vacation.  I generally want to research and plan every possible split second available, and Mike wants to show up somewhere and just see what happens.  These differences are apparent not only in our own travels, but they also seem to materialize when other people come to visit us.  Poor Justin spent Saturday experiencing what happens when our worlds collide: we crammed a full day of activities into the first half of Saturday, and then we spent the other half being as lazy as possible.

Saturday started off with a monumentous occasion- a trip to OfficeMax, where Justin bought his FIRST DIGITAL CAMERA.  Yes, you read that correctly- it’s 2008, Justin is a 26 year old successful engineer, and he has never owned a digital camera before.

After the major electronics purchase, we had some really good pho at Pho Viet Anh, which was exciting because a) good pho is always a good thing, and b) it’s only a mile from our house- we have a local Vietnamese restaurant now!   This is some kind of milestone.  After we were full of noodle goodness, we made it to our first planned destination of the day: BrickCon.

What?  You’ve never heard of BrickCon, the premiere Lego(R) Fan Convention in the continental US?  Then you must be a loser.  I don’t know what you were doing Saturday at noon, but we saw stuff like this:

An actual Lego(R) Ambassador;

Legoville, USA;

A Halo Army (from the video game, Mike had to explain this to me);

Lego-fied art;

A model of the Titanic that was so big that we couldn’t get the entire thing in one shot.  And it was for sale, price upon request only.

After we had our fill of BrickCon, we headed downtown to the Seattle Aquarium.

We saw a gigantic octopus and watched it change colors.  I love that it got paler when it got closer to me.

Justin poked an anenome.

We hung out in the aquarium-dome.

And we saw the otters!  I LOVE otters!

The aquarium was even cooler thanks to Mike’s hefty Microsoft Employee discount.  It saved us more than 50%!  Score.

The rest of Saturday was spent visiting the world’s tiniest bike shop, eating a very late lunch, and then heading back to the house, where I took a nap.  Saturday had officially worn me out by 5:00 PM.  I must be getting old.

This Thursday night we got our first official visitor from back home- our friend Justin flew in Thursday night, giving us the chance to hang out with an old friend, flex our hosting skills, and finally start knocking a few “touristy” things off our list of to-dos.  Yay Justin!

I took this picture as he was loading his bike into Mike’s car at the airport.  Yes, Justin is so hard core that he travels with his bike.

Mike worked on Friday, leaving me to do the entertaining.  We scoped out Pike’s Place Market, ate some Macaroni and Cheese at Beecher’s, which was so delicious and filling that half a cup of the stuff kept us full for about 5 hours, and then took the longest walk ever in the rain.  We walked so much that we were sore the next day, which is saying a lot, because Justin is the most athletic person I know.  After all that wandering, we came back to the house, where Justin rode his bike down and up Queen Anne Hill in the rain to get some bike parts, and then fixed Mike’s bike.  We munched on some ramen from Boom Noodle (just in time for their happy hour specials, score!) and walked around the Capitol Hill Neighborhood, where I got a parking ticket because I simply forgot to pay for parking (you can take the girl out of the suburbs…) and we laughed about how Mike might have died if we had ended up living in a part of the city that actually looked like a city.

Of course, I forgot my camera the entire day, so I don’t have pictures of any of the cool stuff we saw.

We ended the day with a night-time pit stop at the Colonade Bike Park (so the boys could plan for their biking adventure later this weekend) and a delicious dinner at Flying Fish in Belltown.  More adventures and touristy goodness to come…