Monday, August 12, 2013

Adventures in Seattle--Part One (Part Two to Follow Tomorrow)

Husband and i just came back from a four-day trip to Seattle. The reason? Going to see a rock band of course. Why? Because we could!

So, anyone who doesn't know the hubs and I...we turn the most basic of trips into a food and drink excursion to rival Anthony Bourdain. We love to experience as much local culture, food, and drink as we can while we are wherever we are...but we do it on the fly. Spontaneity is usually key for us. It's more fun to randomly find a seedy tavern in an alley than it is to Google to death the "best places to eat" where we are traveling. We want to see the dives and the hovels, the rare jewels, the terrible grossness, all of it. We want the whole experience, even if our colons and livers say otherwise.

So, it was awesome when our rickety, propeller-plane flight to Seattle served complementary wine and beer!

Too bad I was nauseous as heck and could only manage a ginger ale because I get airsick.

And too bad hubs was so passed out asleep that he missed it.

Oh well.

Armed with pizza/sleep breath from our earlier meal and subsequent flight, we immediately hopped a train--that took a millennium-- to get downtown...where we waited for a bus that never came... Oh the joys of the Seattle public transit.

Taxi! 

That was a word we became well acquainted with.

When we finally landed at our hovel of a hotel, which was right in the midst of the ghetto where the prostitutes frequented--joy--we immediately headed out again to hit up downtown and find some great grub. We were starving, after all. Like, really starving, having been on some form of public transportation--or not--for the last few hours after a two hour flight.

Ironically, while we had been waiting for our bus that never came, we had seen a...thing...called The Third Door. Now, we didn't know what it was, but it sounded interesting, and as we got let off downtown from our bus, which HAD come, we only knew one intersection and that was it, so we decided The Third Door was the place to go.

Turns out intuition was right because it was a music venue/theatre/restaurant. How can you get better than that?

Oh, we were there during happy hour. That's how you get better than that.

We ordered half the menu--chicken satay, boar satay, green papaya salad, prawns, duck sliders--not to mention a multitude of cocktails. All were rather exceptional, aside from the papaya salad, which was sour and bizarre and tasted like coleslaw on crack. The drinks weren't amazingly strong, but for the price we were getting them, not bad.

After satiating ourselves, we headed down to the waterfront, meandered, and ended up randomly running--they were boarding when we bought our tickets--onto a cruise that went around the bay. Hey, why not? Cruises are fun, and we had never been in Seattle before. Hubs had been there once, but only for a day. Why not experience the sights?

It was happy hour on the boat too.

And the beer was good.



After an hour long sunset cruise, we ended up at the only place my husband had gone to on his previous trip to Seattle--an Irish Pub called Fado.

And let me tell you...

The food....

OMG.

I got fish and chips, which people think are generally easy to master, but they are not. These were amazing. And hubs got a lamb sandwich served with some beefy au jus sauce.

Now...I am not a fan of lamb...but holy crap. I could have bathed in this sandwich. Not to mention, the drink on special that night was a Crabbie's ginger beer (REAL beer) with a shot of Jameson. Best meal we had all day.


We ended up back at the Third Door later for a live jazz band that was playing, but it almost put me to sleep in the booth--and I came to realize later than NO ONE in Seattle knew how to make a proper Dark N Stormy, but this place took the cake for THE WORST. It was like a rum and coke gone wrong and tasted like coke and olive juice. But over all, I enjoyed the place, and any place catering to local music is OK in my book. Just jazz is not my cup of tea, especially when I have been traveling all day and am exhausted beyond measure.

When we finally collapsed into our gross bed on Prostitute Row later, I thought I would sleep like the dead.
Little did I know, my insomnia was just kicking in...

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