It’s hard to know where to start with this weekend. Ashley paid me a visit over the past couple days and while she was here we experienced every tourist attraction we could get our hands on during the four days and five nights that she was here.
Thursday we went to Il Fornaio restaurant in downtown Seattle where I had some amazing lasagna and Ashley got one of their famous pizzas. Afterwards we got some coffee from one of the millions of Starbucks stands downtown and walked around for a little bit.
Friday we visited one of the Seven Wonders of the Modern World, the Seattle Space Needle, where we took some great pictures above the skyline and shorelines. It was a pretty cool thing to say you’ve done, but it wasn’t a life-altering experience or anything. It cost $14 per person which I thought was a lot of money just to go up and look around, but I guess some experiences are worth their cost. After this we got some Chinese food and boarded the bus headed to Vancouver, BC. I had never crossed an international border before and it was a little nerve-shaking but not too bad. When we got to Vancouver we walked around and took some pictures of Science World and surrounding areas before getting fancied up to head to Cioppino’s restaurant. The food at this joint was awesome, and when we sat down they handed us a menu and a leather bound book with probably 100 pages of all the bottles of wine they had. I ordered duck, which I had never had before and it was superb. It had the tenderness of very well cooked baby back ribs with a peculiar chicken taste.
Saturday we got a pass on one of these Hop-On Hop-Off buses that did a continuous circuit around the city and surrounding areas. We walked all around the city and through many of their parks and gardens. Stanley Park was our last stop before getting back on the bus and taking the full circuit around the city. The cool thing about Vancouver is that it’s a nice metroplex area with plenty of people and things going on, but it’s very intertwined with the nature in which it resides. One thing I noticed was that the sidewalks there were about three times as wide as American cities, which made it very roomy and easy to stroll through. The architecture there was also much more aesthetic than what I’ve seen in Seattle or Dallas. It just seemed like a much more intimate surrounding than most big cities. An interesting fact about the people I saw there was there was a very large population of gothic people. I was kind of confused how Goths could be spawned in such a natural and beautiful place, but maybe that’s exactly what they’re rebelling against. Who knows. The other cool thing about Canada is the legal drinking age is 19 and everyone there seemed very laid back about everything, so that was an interesting contrast against what I’ve seen pretty much my entire life. After a long day we boarded an Amtrak train to head back to Seattle.
Sunday, we met Patrick Halstead and his wife for lunch at Yarrow Bay Grill, met my Aunt Verla and her partner Sue for dinner a few hours later, and then completely gelled out at the Seattle International Film Festival Closing Night Gala showing of the Science of Sleep, which is a movie by the director of Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. It was an interesting flick but we were kind of late getting seated and could not see the English subtitles very well.
Monday brought the wonderful sights and sounds of Pike Place Market and massive amounts of art at the Experience Music Project. However, before arriving at the Public Market we stopped by the Central Seattle Public Library, and it was quite a site to behold. The architectural ingenuity that went into this building is amazing and its all glass exterior makes it a very cool place to hang out and read. I’m sure I will be spending many more lunch breaks at this amazing structure in the heart of downtown Seattle. I had never been to the market during the day and it was really pretty cool. There was freshly caught and filleted fish as well as vegetables and flowers of all kind. We had lunch at this place called the Athenian Inn which overlooked the Sound and served a great fish and chips. EMP was a lot of fun and at the end of the day I was very much overwhelmed by all the art I had seen that day. At the time we went there were three exhibits happening, the DoubleTake art exhibit, the Experience Music Project museum, and the Science Fiction museum and Hall of Fame. The DoubleTake exhibit paired works of art from different time periods to compare and contrast their qualities. There was a lot of Monet and a few Lichenstein, but it was a very down-to-earth exhibit that allowed us laymen to peruse at our own delight. After this we walked through the rock museum which chronologs the history and evolution of rock, from Jazz and blues through the psychedelic 60’s, to death metal, hair bands, and finally to modern day music. One really cool exhibit they had was how electric guitar technology had evolved over the years. After the museum you can go upstairs to the Sound Lab where there are about 20 different booths and sound proof rooms where you can experiment with keyboards, electric guitars, mixing boards, turntables, microphones, drums, wah pedals, and pretty much anything else you can think of. After all of this we headed to the Science Fiction Museum to look through a lot of amazing artifacts from the Science Fiction realm. Some of these included the original model for Jupiter 2 of Lost in Space, props from countless movies, and the only three-dimensional model of the Death Star.
After quite an amazing weekend I am, needless to say, very tired. Be sure to take at the seventy photographs I took over the weekend.
