Lazy Saturday morning… We spent so much time rushing about yesterday, it was nice to rest a bit.

When downloading pics from the digi-cam to the computer, I plugged in the camera, which jammed up the whole thing. We did eventually get it all straightened out.

Breakfast was at this nifty little coffee shop at the bottom of the Westin. They make German pancakes…yum.

We managed to find my cousin Jasun and Tanya’s (his wife of 1 year come this September!) place without problem, but parking is a bit of an issue. Glad we managed to not get the rental car towed!

Off we headed for the Underground Tour, but parking was an issue there as well. We found a place that was $3 for 2 hrs and went to join the tour. Unfortunately the 1pm tour was booked and we had to take the 2pm. We wandered the local galleries (art, glass and Japanese prints. The glass one was playing “Lovecats” by The Cure.) and street faire in the mean time. I managed to not buy anything, but the velvet shirts were tempting. Back to the car meter to insert more $

The underground tour is part comedy act/part historical(hysterical) fact.

Apparently the seattl-ites don’t think much of the Tacoma folk. Something to do with the train being built to go to Tacoma and then when Tacoma making up the map, they left Seattle off the map.

Seattle seems, per the tour version, to be a comedy of errors. Building a town in an area where the tide comes in, so they had to build the town on wooded planks above the water level. Later, the “crapper” was invented and the wood pipe that came down from the cliffs would flow into the bay (and south to Tacoma) but at high tide, the lower cities toilets would spout about 6′ high of refuse.

Later the city suffered a great fire. It was rebuilt, but the city streets were made 12′ – 34′ higher than the sidewalks. (With ladders at intersections). The business owners later put doors on the new street levels, but the underground exists to this day. The purple glass in the sidewalk acts as a skylight to some underground sections. Nifty, eh? Our tour guide, Eric, was very informative, but cracked really bad puns the whole way through. Which I suspect is part of the routine and it kept the tour from being a dry boring history lecture. See book: Sons of the Profit.
After, we needed to get back to the car before the meter ran out.

The Blue Bistro. Since Jasun and Tanya are vegetarians and Bryan has a touchy stomach, it took a while to some to a conclusion. The Blue Bistro filled all the requirements. Dimly lit and eclectic, a large menu (and larger liquor menu) lots of bamboo and private little nooked tables under stairways and wherever. It was neat. It had character.

The Onasiss Pasta was wonderful. Portabello mushroom marinated for 2 days and served on pasta w/ tomatoes, roasted garlic and herbs… Bryan got the wrong meal (tomatoes, olives, garlic, and feta on pasta, instead of a Chicken dish) delivered to him, so they boxed up the error and let us take it with us. They also gave us a pass for a free drink some other night. I think this was good karma for Jasun and Tanya for buying us dinner, they get a better value this way! (They also bought our tour passes, ironic, since Bryan and I had talked about buying them passes to the Music Experience, but we wouldn’t have had enough time to go through the whole museum. )

We wandered by the space needle and music museum. There was a really neat fountain in the park that kids would run and play in. Around the corner was a carnival.
I heard around the corner the strains of “Poor Bela…Bela’s dead) I kept walking and burst out laughing. There’s a carnival ride the is on a coaster track that just goes faster and faster in a circle that is playing a Bauhaus song…and 2 “homie” looking kids are there running the ride. It was hilarious. They probably had no clue what music as playing…the song was probably older than them. Bryan recorded a bit of it for posterity.

Since the sun would start setting soon, we went to a park off of Queen Anne and got a really great view of the city and its skyline. Mostly we just sat and chatted away until the sun was almost all the way down and the city lights came on. A few more pics and we left. And found another great picture spot.

The street lamp was fizzling a bit, but when Jasun touched it, it completely died out. The after a moment, Bryan touched it and it came on again…until Jasun touched it again. Also, on the inside of the frosted globe was a spider, we could see its shadow crawling on the inside.

By Aurora (st?) there is a troll under a bridge. It has an old VW bug in one hand. Most cities put up statues of dead politicians. This one put a troll under the bridge. Cool.

After all this 10pm rolled around and it came time to part ways. We have to wake up early to pack up, see the fish market, and get to the airport so we can return the rental car, check in and get through security before the plane leaves!

Its sad. Our honeymoon is almost over. (and getting time off from work is like getting blood from a stone lately, so I know its going to be a while until the next Great Adventure. )

On the upside, I get to visit my mom, see our pets, have double-family get together and finally open our wedding gifts!!!

He Says

We did not rush out of bed when we woke up in the morning. It was nice to be a little more relaxed in the morning for a change.

Met up with Kryis’s cousin Jasun and his wife Tanya at their apartment in the Capital Hill area of Seattle… not really too far from where we were staying.

Headed down to where the Underground Tour sets off from. It was a little difficult to find parking, but we eventually did. Walked over to the underground tour and found out that the 1:00 tour was already full so Tanya and Jasun bought us all thickets for the 2:00–which was very nice of them. We wandered around for a while checking out art galleries and stores in the area before wandering back to the car to put more money in the meter.

Go to the underground tour, and it was very interesting AND entertaining. I enjoyed the history lesson that was presented in a very humorous way. Even Kryis was entertained by it, and its HISTORY!! Wandered through the underground and heard more of the stories. Still good. I recommend the Seattle Underground tour to anyone. I wished there were surviving pictures of when the street level and the shop level were 20 feet different.

Finish the underground tour and head back to the car. We were all hungry so we started talking about where we were going to eat. Jasun and Tanya are both vegetarian (and Tanya is a full blown Vegan), and I am fairly picky, so it was not an easy decision.

Finally we decided to go to this place called the “Blue Bistro.” And it was fairly scary. Very mish-mash, throw-a-table-where-ever-you-can-cram-people-in-a-booth-under-the-stairs. Not what I would exactly call my favorite place to try to eat.

When I first picked up the menu, it had nothing but alcoholic drinks in it, which was the furthest thing from my mind in terms of ordering, especially considering of the four of us, I was the only one who could drive. Found out there was supposed to be food in the menu, so Iooked on with Kryis in another menu. Slim pickins for what I would be interested in. Most of the items on the menu had ingredients in them that I am either unfamiliar with, disturbed by, or do not like the taste of. I finally found something that I liked, but when the food came, it was the wrong dish. I had to wait a little longer for my food, which was okay. Tanya and Jasun paid for this as well. Which started to make me feel bad. I felt Kryis and I should treat them to something, so we decided, if we could, we would pay for them to come to the Music Experience with us. Afterwards we headed to the park near the space needle and the Music Experience.

Unfortunately, by the time that we got there, there was not enough time to go through the Music Experience. We wandered around the park for a while, until we had seem most of everything.

Next we headed to a park on Queen Anne hill and saw a great view of the Seattle skyline. There was a wedding party taking pictures at the park. We sat on a park bench there for a little while until the sun had set and then got back in the car. We drove around the neighborhood some more, and found another neat overlook. We stopped there and checked it out. Took a few more pictures and headed out again. Jasun and Tanya mentioned that there was a statue of a troll under a bridge, so we went to check it out.

It was cool, but there was an annoying kid climbing all over it making it difficult to take a picture of it. Afterwards we decided it was late. Kryis and my honeymoon was ending the next day, and we had still hoped to get up early enough to check out Pike’s Place Market before we had to head to the airport.