West Coast Bonanza! Part 2

I wrote the first piece about my trip to the west coast and then I just didn't write much of anything so here I am, back to cover off on the last leg of our trip. Back to Seattle!

Years ago we randomly decided to visit Seattle for a vacation cos hey, why not? And it turns out that we sort of love it there. So we've been back a few times. Basically any time we find ourselves in the vicinity of the west coast, and this trip was no exception.

I have the most photos from this leg of the trip, probably because it was the part we weren't with friends and I tend to forget to take pictures when people are around. Except at the zoo. I have about a million from there.

First stop:

Paseo OBVIOUSLY. There's been lots of drama around Paseo and the new restaurant (which is run by the son of the original owner of Paseo) Un Bien and I could GO ON about this. But I won't. I'll just tell you that we landed in Seattle, picked up our rental car and went straight to Paseo and it was just as I remembered. Amazing. We headed to Kerry Park to enjoy our sandwiches. I don't have any pictures before I started eating, because that would have required me to hold off on digging in, but I did get one mid-way through.

We then enjoyed the beautiful weather and view.

We were trying to decide what to do for the evening when we saw that there was a production of the play The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time going on. And they had tickets available. I had read the book back when it first came out but Tom didn't know anything about it so surprises for him. BTW it was very good and if you get the chance to see, I recommend.

The next day we decided to check out the Chihuly Garden and Glass near the Space Needle. Cos we've done the Space Needle and the MoPOP (formerly the EMP, Experience Music Project and Science Fiction Museum) a bunch of times. Well we've done EMP a bunch of times. Anyway, we wanted to see something new and glass art is pretty.

We made our way over to the Market for some lunch (Country Dough, homemade Chinese noodles) and wandered around the stalls. We did our mini-shopping: picked up some tea from MarketSpice, Rainier cherries from one of the farm stalls, Chinese pastries from a place I should prob remember the name of, and some homemade pepper pasta from another stall I should prob remember the name of but I am a bad shopper. 

The weather, which had been overcast and drizzly in the morning, improved in the afternoon so we drove up to Snoqualmie Falls and did a little hike. I mean, we hadn't totally planned the hike. It was more like "Hey, let's walk down this path and see the waterfall from a different angle" and then we realized we'd have to come back UP the path to get back to the car. But it sounds better if I just say "And then we did a little hike." There were notices to watch out for mountain lions and bears and I wouldn't have been super surprised if there was a Bigfoot out there. 

We ended the day meeting up with some friends for dinner (at which point Tom coined the term Satellite Seattelite and he's very proud of this) before heading back into the city.

Cities tend to have tall buildings with observation towers, and Seattle is no different. We'd done some of them on previous trips but Tom found one in the Smith Tower, which was originally built in the 1910s. What it lacks in height of some of the newer buildings it makes up for in having a whole bunch of history (which they tell you buy way of a mini-scavenger hunt type thing where you pretend to be a bootlegger from the '20s. Or like a cop or something, but I went bootlegger), a cool old fashioned elevator and a really pretty observation room. And so pretty views of the city.

We went to Il Corvo for lunch. It's this place that makes homemade pastas. They only have a few options each day and the line is insane.We'd been a few times before, including when they had a location at the Market and lines weren't so long, but word got out that the food is delicious so it was about an hour wait. We were prepared and the food was worth it.

After lunch we wandered around Chinatown for a bit before heading to the Underground Tour. Which we've done before BUT it's a neat tour, all about the history of the city and the fact that they had to build everything up a level and also "seamstresses" (aka hookers) were really responsible for a lot of the success of the city. Our tour guide wasn't plastered like the last one we had (who we noticed was now working for a rival underground tour group) but entertaining nonetheless.

Finally we went to a Mets/Mariners game because of course there's gotta be baseball. Tom got some great seats and the Mets won AND it was fireworks night so good times.

(I'm almost done, I swear).

Our last day, we had a red eye leaving around 10pm so we had one final day in the city. We met up with a coworker of Tom's who was in the city for Mets stuff. After breakfast, as it was another beautiful day, we decided to drive around a bit. We went through some new neighborhoods, making our way to Un Bien because we HAD to compare Un Bien to Paseo. It was amazing and delicious and trying to choose between the two is like trying to choose between children. We ended up at Woodland Park to enjoy our epic sandwiches (they were so good) and watch some LARPing (not planned but it was happening), then headed over to Gasworks and the Ballard Locks before picking up some more Un Bien sandwiches (IMPORTANT) and heading to the airport and back to the real world.

West Coast, you were pretty swell. 

West Coast Bonanza! Part 1

As we get older, it seems it's harder and harder to meet up with people. Life seems to get in the way and making plans requires so much work and coordination and shared calendars. But last month we somehow managed to make it work, and Tom and I spent time on the west coast with a bunch of friends. And it was amazing. So hey, let's look at some pictures I took during vacation while I procrastinate on getting actual reviews written.

First stop: Vegas
OK so, I don't actually have that many pictures of Vegas. I tend to be bad about remembering to take pictures. But Tom is better about that so here's a few.

We spent some time wandering among the various casinos (I don't gamble so I mostly enjoyed how ridiculous they all are as well as the AC). Otherwise we ate some good food, saw the Beatles Love Cirque du Soleil show and hung out with a couple of our friends who drove out from San Diego.

Second stop: Grand Canyon
I was very excited for the Grand Canyon. I'd never been before and it looked so beautiful and different compared to any sort of landscape I'm used to on the east coast. Since we were going to be driving from Vegas to the Canyon and then from the Canyon to San Diego, we stuck to the west rim to save us a few hours of driving.

It was as breath-taking as everyone says. Also, while I understand not wanting to put up anything that would mess with the view, OMG there is NOTHING preventing people from falling into the Canyon other than a few guys going "Hey, don't get to close please" which is STRESSFUL. But beautiful so.

Third stop: San Diego
I give Tom tons of credit for helping coordinate, well really the entire trip, but this piece especially because there were a lot of people to try to get on the same page. There were, of course, the friends that were with us in Vegas (we were staying at their place during the San Diego leg of the trip); there were our other friends who just recently moved (and in her case moved back) to San Diego this past winter; there were our friends who were coming out from Rhode Island for a week in San Diego; and finally there was our friend from NYC who was literally spending 48 hours in Cali before having to head back home.

San Diego was great, in no small part to the company. There were bonfires and zoos and brewery tasting rooms and baseball and beach and lots of Mexican food. Generally this was a very chill part of the trip with some touristy things but a lot of relaxing.

I'll post some zoo pictures (because I have SO MANY from there) and then leave the rest to another post.

Toronto, I visited you (part 2)

As I mentioned before, we recently visited Toronto because it's a swell city.

So our second day in the city (or really first full day), we did a tour of the island, the CN Tower, the zoo, but the day wasn't done yet. Well first up, I forgot to mention before going to the zoo we got bahn mis from Bahn Mi Boys and OH MAN, this might have been my favorite meal of the trip. I have no pictures of the sandwich. I typically forget to take pictures of my food cos I dive right in.

Anyway, so after the zoo we weren't done with the day yet. My FitBit was so impressed with me.

We took a quick nap ('twas necessary) before grabbing Thai food at Pai and heading off to see a Second City show. Again, no pictures from the show cos I'm not a jerk. Unlike the table of people that got kicked out for repeatedly yelling at the actors and when one of the actors made fun of them and told them (through a joke) to stop, one guy yelled "What are you gonna do about it?" Quality people, clearly. But ANYWAY, the show was fun and there were lots of sketches about how terrifying the world is cos laugh to keep from crying, y'all.

It was a long day and we slept very well that night, which was good cos there was so much more to do.

It was a rainy morning but luckily we planned to spend the morning at Casa Loma, aka this castle in Toronto that is featured in a bunch of movies such as Rocky Horror and Chicago.

After the castle we headed to The Stockyards for a BBQ lunch. Again, no pictures because food. But Tom and I split a fried green tomato BLT and a burger and they were EXCELLENT.

Since we didn't do enough walking the day before, we decided to make the 30 min walk from our hotel to the Royal Ontario museum because museums with dinosaur bones? Yes please. Of course, I mean, it's not all dino bones. There's also artwork from China and Egyptian mummies and lots of stuff. And we were only sort of too exhausted to really appreciate it. (We didn't actually fall asleep but may have come close.)

We walked back from the museum with a long break at a park to people watch before getting changed and heading out to dinner at El Local Loco for tacos. Such tasty tacos.

On our last full day we decided we really wanted to get some schwarma for an early lunch. Except our last full day also happened to be Easter so finding a place that was open was a bit of a challenge, but we managed to find something near Rogers Stadium. Oh, cos we were going to another game. Because, see, technically the first game didn't count cos we weren't actually in the stadium. Plus it was important we went to this game because they were giving out umbrellas and that was important.

The last stop of the trip was the aquarium.

After this we decided to have dinner at Marche which is basically a fancy food court, but the food was delicious and the people there were very nice when I spilled lemonade everywhere because I am super graceful all the time.

We wandered around for a bit before heading back to the hotel to pack (sigh) and head out the next morning, back to the real world. Thanks, Toronto.