Seattle ~1

We just returned from a wonderful gifted trip to Alaska from Mark's parents. We spent 7 days cruising the beautiful Inside Passage. It will be impossible for me to include the hundreds of photos we took, but hopefully I can include enough to capture a snippet of this AMAZING vacation.

Since our port was in Seattle, Mark and I decided to fly in a day early to explore Seattle a little. Beautiful view of Mount Rainier from the plane.

We used their light rail system to get around Seattle. It was the best! Very affordable and makes stops frequently, making it easy to get to just about every part of the city. 

On the top of our list was Pike Place Market. Pretty much a must when you visit Seattle. 

It was a beautiful day.... with TONS of people. I imagine that it's never uncrowded, but a Saturday afternoon in July was insane. We were instantly tempted by all the food ... everywhere. We had to try this Southern Hoecake. It was so yummy!

We were enjoying it on a bench, when we're enticed by another smell nearby. We asked the consumers where they got their food, and they directed us to this dumpy little hole in the wall.

We tried a curry beef Chinese pastry called a Hom Bow. Such a strange combination of sweet bread and savory filling. Surprisingly very good. 

We tried samples of Beecher's Mac n Cheese, dried fruit, and a few other things that I can't remember right now. It was more than we needed, but it is hard to resist with it in your face at every turn. They had rows of flowers that were so beautiful and fresh.

We went from delicious to disgusting. The Gum Wall. So grotesque, but you just gotta.

And the infamous Pike Place Fish Co is a real showstopper. It's probably even more entertaining if it's your fish they are throwing around, but it was fun to watch the action.

you might be able to make out the fish in the air

All that food, made us feel like a good walk. We took the light rail as far as we could and then walked the rest of they way to Washington Park Arboretum. The walk took us through neighborhoods filled with old houses of my dreams and what is known as Montlake Cut, a section of the Lake Washington Ship Canal.

Honestly, I don't recall if this was on the way to the Arboretum or the University. I got turned around ... and we walked A LOT that day. The Arboretum is a hidden gem located on the shores of Lake Washington. 

It was so green and lush. We saw a collection of plants and trees from different parts of the world.

Mark could have stayed there for twice as long as we did. 

However, we had more walking to do. We really wanted to see as much of the city as we could. Our last stop was to check out the University. But first we had to make it there alive. Funny story about this bridge... and a little frightening. We were about halfway across it (on the sidewalk of course), when the bells started ringing and the arms came down stopping traffic from both sides. How lucky were we that we were going to get a front row seat to a big ship passing through. So we stopped (on the sidewalk of course), so the bridge could do whatever it needed to do for the ship to pass. So there we stood, not sure why nothing was happening. Until we realized this whole bridge lifts (sidewalk and all).  I guess you had to be there, because it made perfect sense that we could stay on the sidewalk while that bridge lifted. I know! We're pretty smart. But we just could not see it at the time. We did move (quickly) and all was well. I am sure we were the talk of the town.

We stumbled upon a couple of bikes in the Bike Share program. We decided this would be a fun way to explore the University. We could not get the app to work for one of them and I didn't appreciate the power of the electric bike and ended up running into a newspaper dispenser (nobody was hurt). So the bike option didn't work out and we trekked on to the beautiful campus of another UW (but not our favorite;)

It was a incredible day in Seattle. We were anxious to meet up with the rest of the Smiths for our highly anticipated Alaskan Cruise. We got up early Sunday morning to get to the port. We took our very first Uber ride. Our driver was so nice and it was fun getting to know a little about him.