"So, where are you all from?"
"We're locals, now."
"That's great. You're the first locals to come in here today. Where did you move from?"
"Chicago-ish."
"Oh, my (insert relative here) is from (insert suburb here) . . . . "
Had that exchange a couple of times during the weekend. Neither good nor bad but a little odd. We're in this position where we now live here (Seattle, but you knew that already, right?) but as we're brand new are still doing a bunch of touristy things. Are you going to move to St. Louis and not visit the Gateway Arch? Or move to San Antonio and not visit the Alamo? I love San Antonio, that city is great and you should visit if you haven't, btw. But it isn't great being branded a tourist in your new hometown. Might have to continue to grow out the beard (listen, you can hear Julie screaming "noooo!") as we work through this phase.
But I digress (and haven't even really started yet, prolly not a good sign) and wanted to give an update on what we did during our first family weekend here in Seattle.
Friday night we kicked things off with a big dinner in Chinatown/International District. We landed at Red Lantern and had (***/***** (three-out-of-five-stars)) pretty good dinner, highlighted by a great hot/sour soup and the restaurant's owner picking up Samson and taking him on a tour of the kitchen.
Truth-be-told, we were a little disappointed in the fish & snap peas once we found out it was tilapia. We moved out to the Northwest for all of the fresh salmon, tuna, cod, and trout. We can go to Omaha for tilapia! It was also Grandma Lipsky's favorite fish so, while generally positive in memory (you can't have a totally (or marginally for that matter) positive memory of Fran Lipsky eating as she was a bit overboard with the 'talking while eating' thing) tilapia has always felt like a grandparent's fish. We still ate it all up. Oooh, an anti-tilapia rant, bet you didn't see that one coming?!
We then went looking for a Chinese bakery, hoping to find some butterfly and almond cookies. We didn't search far and ended up at a Chinese cake bakery, which wasn't exactly what we were looking for but not a crumb was left.
So, our initial strategy for weekends is that we want to spend one day doing something outside the city and then one day in the city. Smart, right. So as we ventured out for our first trip we didn't want to spend too much time in the car. Vashon Island is a pretty large island and its only a short ferry ride from West Seattle. Big thumbs up to the ferry, quick ride and on-time.
Vashon Island, pretty large with more than 10,000 residents and a ton of wineries, funky galleries, farmer's markets, and beaches. And how much of that do you want to do with a two-year old? Well, probably the farmer's market but we didn't go there. So let's find a place to eat and a playground.
We ate at The Hardware Store Restaurant, and had a lovely time. They did take their time with our order though (here comes another rant, folks!) By no means do I advocate moving our (or any other family with a toddler) order to the front if the line but the longer you take to get us our food the more time Samson has to knock over your water glasses, eat your crayons, and destroy your flowers. Vashon Island's Hardware Store Restaurant, you are a cozy and charming restaurant, on behalf of my son, I apologize for the damange we inflicted upon you. But you could have brought our food out a little sooner and avoided all of it, just sayin' . . .
So now lets look at some pics playing at the park!
Good looking park, eh?
Saturday night dinner found us at Duke's Chowder House (*****/*****). They have a couple of these around Seattle and they are phenominal. They have a bunch of different chowders, all great (you can order a chowder flight) and had some teriffic mahi fish tacos. The price is decent and the food just totally exceeded.
For the sake of appearances, lets just pretend that it's chowder that is going into his nose instead of boogers that is going into his chowder. Okay? Okay.
Too many pictures of the boy? 'Samson in CATL' a better blog title? Maybe. But what would that mean when we're still doing this after we have number two (settle down mom, nothing to announce) wouldn't he or she be jealous? We're sticking with the title. At least for now.
Sunday, let's get out to Pikes Place Market. A whole ton of greatness at this place and its worth all of the hype it gets. Sure, there are a lot of things there for visitors but there is just so much to check out and explore. A cramped little magic shop ("No, you cannot have the juggle with fire tools"), baseball card shop, exotic flowers, collectibles, tons of Asian stores ("No, you cannot have a sword.") fresh fish everywhere and about every type of ethnic food stall. They have a cheese store there called Beecher's, where Julie got an order of the world's greatest mac-and-cheese. Amazing! If/when you come to visit we'll get you this mac-and-cheese too. Wowza!
Here's Julie corraling the boy at Pikes Place
Sunday was also Coopalooza downtown. This was a one-day celebration of Washington coop living. They had a bunch of different expo booths a big kid area (here comes more pics!) and a stage where they had music. No, we aren't going to start coop living, but we will enjoy the samples at your booths! We got there towards the end, which is what we wanted, so we could see the Moondoggies. I've like the Moondoogies for a while and finding out that they're from Seattle made it a bunch better. And a special thanks to them as they would warn the familes when they were about to amp it up. "So yeah, this next one is a bit of a rocker, so get ready!"
So a pretty great first weekend here. We're still at the hotel as we await our movers (Kent, where are you?!) But today Comcast shows up to install internet. And we've made the decision to leave DirecTV and use Comcast for both internet and cable. Bold, eh?
Speak soon.
- JLips
