Seattle Top 10

My apologies for my absence. Sometimes I want to write and sometimes I don't. But at the request of a friend and after a fun trip worth mentioning I feel like writing again.

A quick housekeeping note: I'm going to un-private the private status of W.H.C. I've proved the point I wanted to prove by going private and I get annoyed when blogs I follow don't show up in my reader because they are private. So I'm going public again. Watch for me in your reader.

Ok! Now some fun! This weekend was Fall Break here in UT and way back in June I found cheap airfare to a place I've wanted to go for oh-so-long. SEATTLE! I sent a link to the airfare to six or eight friends thinking that out of those two or three would want to go. Two and three did want to go. And so did five and six. Six of us went to Seattle. So fun.

I found an awesome vacation rental (a condo near downtown) that was so, so perfect.

I don't want to make this a travel log so I'm just going to tell you about my top ten favorite things about it.

1. Pike's Market. This place could probably fill spaces 1-5 actually. I would move to this city just for this place. Endless stalls of produce, seafood, flowers, crafts etc. It was fabulous. I'd see men carrying huge bouquets that I knew they got for super cheap and sigh. I would love to live there just to have a nice young man bring me one of those bouquets one time. Lucky girls.

2. Cooking a fresh salmon filet and roasted veggies that we bought from the market in our condo. 'Nuff said.

3. Sailing on Puget Sound. Sailing is on my bucket list and I got to fulfill it in Seattle. Kind of anyway...I would actually like to help hoist sails and secure the jib and the like but if I never get the opportunity at least I can say that I've been sailing. Also noteworthy: watching the young man who's job it was to hoist sails hoisting sails. What a cutie. Which brings me to #4.

4. This may not be the 4th greatest thing about Seattle but I couldn't pass up such a solid lead in as I gave myself above...The men of Seattle were generally attractive and SINGLE! Meaning they weren't all wearing wedding rings which is what I'm used to. And I don't have a great story to tell of meeting someone or anything...it was just refreshing to get smiled at a couple times. I even got catcalled a couple times which never happens in UT.

5. Fish, chips, chowder, and crab at Ivar's on the pier. Yum.

6. The Seattle Art Museum. I'm a sucker for art museums. Especially when there's a Picasso exhibit in town.

7. The locks and fish ladders connecting Puget Sound and Lake Washington. Nerdy but I love water, boats and wildlife ok?

8. Our tour guide on the Underground tour finding out we were from UT and saying "well you must know the popcorn popping song" and then making us sing it to the rest of the tour.

9. Our new gay friend Johnathan taking us "to the Forest" as directed by his Persian employer in his Volvo on Bainbridge Island. "The Forest" was straight out of a Twilight movie. We expected to see Edward or Jacob come leaping out at us any moment.

10. The city itself. There were a lot of homeless which was not awesome but other than that its a beautiful, recycling, pet-friendly, delicious doughnut producing, bike-riding city on the water. I could totally live there because there's decent skiing an hour away! I'd have to find a job though...ugh.

Maybe one of you could move there and I could come stay? Sounds like a good plan.

Next up, Vancouver, Chicago, Disneyland, Brazil, Thailand...who's down?