Before we get to Seattle, I'll do a brief update of yesterday. The day started out with another drive through a foggy construction site. And continued with a balky sd card in my camera. Luckily, there are two in the camera so not much was messed up.
The best part of the day was our long drive through the Thompson and Fraser River valleys. The views are like watching a documentary on tv. Unfortunately for me, the road was so curvy and hilly and steep that I only caught brief glimpses while driving. We did stop a few times to do some viewing but even that was a bit dicey because you had to rejoin the 100 kph traffic. I was sad to leave the valley as it was exciting driving. Reminded me quite a bit of Gran Turismo on the PS3. Oddly, Marilyn seemed relieved once we got to more sedate driving.
Here are some shots from our trip through the valley.
This shot shows one of the spots where we stopped to take a look at things. I found it fun to put the gas pedal to the floor on gravel to gain speed on the curved hill. Marilyn, not so much.
I really like this one because it shows how the road twisted around the rocks. Whenever I get a cool sports car, I'm coming back here!
This is a sample of the generally beautiful scenery that we saw all throughout the valley.
We saw a number of train tunnels that had been built into the mountains.
As we approached Burnaby, we went over a new and interesting bridge. Apparently they had some issues with it in the winter when ice formed on the wires and then started falling on the cars.
Our plans for the night didn't include a hotel for the first time in a couple of weeks. We drove 9+ hours from Prince George to Burnaby to visit with Marilyn's cousins. Sort of. There's some twice removed things going on but, cousin is easiest. We had a great bbq salmon dinner along with lots of talking with Allan and Brennan.
Yes, we are a bit tired and we're in Seattle! We arrived here after a gps aided detour around a major highway mess on the way here. In spite of all the reading I'd done about the city, it was a fairly big surprise to find that Seattle has hills that are much like the ones we found in San Francisco. Add to that a mess of twisting one way streets and construction and the ride in was less than a pleasure cruise. We wanted to go to Salumi, Mario Batali's dad's sandwich shop, before checking into our hotel. Maybe it was the high buildings or the crazy hills, but the gps was going a bit crazy and we ended up doing some circling around and at least one illegal turn before parking on an angle on a giant hill. Welcome to Seattle!
It's was a lot steeper than it looks here!
After making sure the car was not going anywhere, we started walking towards the sandwich place which was a km or so away. I had heard that there were line ups and it was true. It was worth the wait though. I think it's an old time shop that was there long before Mario was a household name.
This is the meatball sandwich with the family recipe meatballs. Major taste sensation!
And this is their own prosciutto with goat cheese and roasted figs. OMG!
We walked back to our hotel, working off those calories, and found that we were both quite wiped out from all the driving and walking. Hence, the title of this post. We did manage to get ourselves reorganized to walk down to the Pike Place Market area for around 5:30. It is way bigger than I had expected and there were more places to explore than we had time for. We'll be going back tomorrow as we only saw them throw one salmon! Here are a few images of the market area.
There an incredible assortment of the most beautiful looking seafood that we'd ever seen. And many of the prices were substantially lower than anything we have at home. Plus, you can't get some of this stuff at home.
Smoked salmon on skewers!
This is the first Starbucks! You couldn't get inside as it was wall to wall people waiting for their $5 skinny vanilla lattes or whatever. No worries though. It seems like every time you turn a corner, there's another Starbucks! They are more prevalent than Timmie's back home.
This is the view of Puget Sound directly behind the market area. I'm really loving the layered mountain in misty sky shots that are available out here.
For dinner, we both wanted seafood. We had researched restaurants in the car but nothing had jumped out at us. So, after wandering a bit, we sat on a bench near the market and went through a bunch of Urban Spoon recommendations. We decided on the Steelhead Diner which is named after a fish. And it's not really a diner in the true sense of the word. Didn't matter because they had some amazing seafood.
Marilyn had a jumbo lump crab cake that was unlike any we've ever had (I had a taste!). The lumps of crab were 4 to 5 cm long! She also had a chowder made with Alaskan razor clams. The green is deep fried parsley! I don't like parsley but I ate this proving that anything deep fried is good!
I had a Pike Place Cioppino which is a kind of seafood stew. I make a version at home but it has a slightly thicker sauce than this.
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