Chihuly, Mario Batali and Food Trucks!

Yes, we had another busy day in Seattle. I know the title is somewhat confusing but it will make sense in a bit. The day dawned grey once again. People here seem quite used to that. We headed out early towards the Space Needle which is about a 15 minute walk from the hotel. It's part of Seattle Center which has a science centre, theatres, a museum and the Chihuly Garden and Glass gallery. Chihuly is a one name artist who has worked with glass blowing since the 60s. He's gone through many phases and has built amazing installations all over the world. I have to admit that I went in wondering how long it would hold my attention but it was a stunning display of glass pieces, some as big as trees. If you are ever in the Seattle area, you really should make every effort to get to this display. 

This one and others like it were at least 4 metres tall!

There were also outdoor garden exhibits. Sorry for posting so many pictures but I just found this stuff stunning. 

And, finally, you could get a digital picture taken in the display and mail it to yourself. This is our souvenir as there's no way I was trying to bring back one of the mini glass models. The cheapest one was over $2000!

We also saw the Space Needle. After living with the CN Tower for all these years, it was not a big deal. I took a few shots of it reflected in the glass pieces but here's one from the street.

The most interesting looking building was the EMP museum (Experience Music Project). We didn't go in as it was described as a kid friendly place and we saw a herd of daycare kids going in, but the outside was pretty cool. 

We started walking back across the city to the market area. It was about a half hour walk and by the time we arrived, it was more or less lunch time. I had researched where the food trucks should have been but many weren't there. Eventually, we found a few and had a great lunch. Since we've tried so many food trucks, we are getting fussy. We try to find trucks now that make something different. Anyone can do pulled pork or burgers or poutine. Today we found Papa Bois, a Caribbean fusion truck. This is the Orient sandwich, made with pork loin and coconut lemongrass marinade. It had great flavours that we hadn't tried before. 

The other truck was called Off The Rez and it was Indian (as in First Nations) tacos made with fry bread. Probably not diet food but it was also very good. Oh, we had the dessert fry bread with peach sauce too!

After lunch, we walked back to Pike Place Market. It is a very interesting place with tons of shops but it is massively crowded. It's more of a sideshow than going to St. Lawrence Market I think. 
It was this crowded everywhere!

So, today is another one of those days where I didn't take a lot of pictures after lunch. It's going to look like we had lunch, walked a bit, then had dinner. Not so! We actually walked almost 15 km today and we did laundry in the afternoon. And we had a bit of down time during which I was checking my twitter feed. I noticed that Mario Batali was tweeting pictures of places we'd seen in Seattle. I wondered if he was in town. Turns out, he was and he tweeted a picture of a restaurant that he really likes. I believe he's friends with the chef. We thought if Mario likes it, we should try it. Luckily, the restaurant, called Palace Kitchen, was only about 5 blocks away. We walked in and got a great table right away. The food was the best we've had in Seattle. Thanks, Mario!
We shared an app of dungeness crab, tomatoes, avocodo, house made bacon and a cured egg yolk.

Marilyn had home made tagliatelle with leeks, English peas, pecorino cheese and pistachios.

My dinner might have been called Pork Overload. It was Kielbasa Stuffed Pork Roast. 

In the morning, we're off to Portland for 3 days. We think we'll visit some wineries on the way there and then start exploring the city.

Sleepy In Seattle

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.

 And there were also quite a few car tunnels, many a lot longer than this one.

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.