Get-away trip (SEATTLE-VICTORIA)

SEATTLE:

Green, yummy, and crisp

IT was time to get away...after a Summer full of Family Vacay's, the Parents of this clan decided to hit the skies and head West, Northwest to be specific.  

Seattle is a city known for great food and it did not disappoint.  We literally ate our way through Seattle!  We ate many times without even being hungry!  In fact we had one of the best crepes ever (Fresh Peaches in a mini footbal sized crepe covered with fresh homemade cream), followed by mini donuts, followed by Straciatella Gelato, followed by fish and chips. 

 

 In between eating fresh chowder every few hours, we managed to see a few sites.  

We spent an afternoon at the LOCKS where the river meets the ocean.  They call it the LOCKS because they pull boats of all sizes into these lock areas.  The water rises or lowers in the lock, depending on which way the boat is headed.  Really cool.  

We watched the whole process happen for not only large barges but for local sail boaters also.  They also had a very cool Salmon Ladder where the salmon that are swimming upstream can move from the salt water of the ocean to the freshwater of the river.  Also very cool. 

Big barge.

Locals .

Lock opening once the water level has come down.  This only took about 5-10 mins.  AMAZING.

Boats moving out.

PIKES Market:

Our favorite market.  I wish it were my market!  Everything is so fresh and full of flavor.

As you walked through the rows and rows of fresh stands of fruit they would hand you a fresh cut peach.  Super sweet both in the flavor and the experience.    

Oh wow! 

 Fresh flowers. Fish. Produce. Nuts. Goods.  And the fish vendors didn't disappoint with their throwing of the fresh catch.  

We watched them make these bite-size doughnuts.  We bought the combo bag so we could try the many different flavors.  Yummmm!!!!

Much like San Francisco, Seattle was full of characters.  This guy was crazy!  If you look closely you'll see that he is playing his harmonica while working two hula hoops, playing two guitars and working the castanettes attached to his shoes.  And he sang to boot.  

The city air felt so crisp and clean.  The weather was the best.  We choose this time of year to go on purpose.  In the usually rainy city we had 5 days of crystal clear weather.

We hit up the Space Needle.

Sights from the top.  Mt. Rainier in the distance.

VICTORIA:

We took an early morning ferry to Victoria, Canada.  The Victoria Clipper was full of interesting characters.  It was like a sitcom, watching all of the different people interact.  Getting off the boat, we quickly realized that we would fall in love with this incredible place.  

We spent the whole day there wandering through the streets of this quaint town.  Flowers were everywhere.  Architecture was stunning.  

We found a guy that owned a Board Game Shop and (Scot) spent about an hour visiting with him talking games.  Interesting character and he even bought a new game from him.  We also stumbled onto a local bookstore and rested the dogs a bit looking through (and smelling) the stacks and stacks of books.  

We did lots of shopping and eating (again!).  For dinner, tired of the tourist traps, we got smart and started asking the "locals" where to eat.  They lead us to this downstairs shopping area that had this hole in the wall called "Hernandez," that had this amazing Argentinian food.  Top 10 on our list of lifetime meals.  Everything was fresh and organic.  

It was so delish!  Totally healthy too!

Seriously this could be eaten everyday.....its was that good!  Mouth is watering just looking at this pic.

More architecture.  STUNNING!

I took this picture and realized later how darling the leather bag is......ha.

I LOVE flowers!  Scot was getting impatient with all my up-close-and -personal shots of the flowers.

Aren't they gorgeous!!!!  Ew LA LA.......

On the way back to our ferry for our departure to Seattle, we tried these Waffels called "wafel".  Oh my, they were so divine!  I asked the guy where the syrup was and he said that the wafel already had been sweetened.  YUM!

You ate it right off the griddle........oh man, I was ballooning by this point.

More fun characters...........

This Father-Son played their bag pipes.

This is the famous "Empress hotel".  They have tea parties everyday in the lobby.  We did not partake.