Day 8 - Eating Cheese and Gettin' Wild

 Day 8 - Seattle

A little tour of the hotel grounds to start...

Then onto Seattle! It was a gorgeous sunny day, and I think all of Seattle turned out to enjoy the last sunny day of the year.

Food? In mass quantities?  You know we went here

famous fish place

They like to toss dead sea animals to each other

Hello, fishy.

There were also tons of fresh flowers

Inside a GREAT tea/coffee shop - handmade labels for each of their loose-lea teas. Loved the nod to ST:NG with their Earl Grey label

More beautiful flowers

Corene would have gone crazy with her camera

Wanted a pic in front of the market - I think C and I waited like 20 minutes for those Arab boys in the background to quit taking pictures of each other. We finally gave up.

Wandering around the market area - went down to the waterfront.

You had to pay a quarter at each showcase, and it would pull back a curtain and you could view the display

I found this carnival-like wall down in the bowels of the market.  It featured shoes, which I thought was both fun and hilarious.  It enjoyed a nice revival for a few minutes, as my antics drew some attention, and it became ok for other people to be interested as well.  Just proves that people really are lemmings.

Looking inside one - you can't see it all, there was a GIANT shoe, and pictures of it's past owners and a history.

Why am I so excited, pray tell?  That's a cheese store behind me, and you can watch them make it!! WUT.

Cheese-person draining curds.  I could watch them for hours

TRYING TO DECIDE ON WHICH ONES TO GET! DILEMMA!  I ended up getting fresh cheese curds (they are delicious and a bit squeaky), a raw milk cheddar and then a smoked cheddar. Mmm.

The first and original Starbucks.  You would not BELIEVE the line. Although there were cool groups that would switch our performing for all the folks in line.

NOW it's sunny?!

Fun with my sis

I probably could have spent the whole day at the market, but we wanted to see a bit more of Seattle, and for some reason I became obsessed with going to the zoo.

Look! Us taking a normal picture!

Oh wait, nevermind.

And now there will be a parade of animal shots.

Some kind of leopard, I think.

Jaguar

David loves him

Elk. The elk and wolves enclosures were open, and cleverly designed so to the guests, it looks like they are sharing a compartment, when in reality the hilly design allows for a tall fence in the valley btwn them.

Wolves!  We are actually only seeing them bc we were in the park WAYY after closing and everyone else had left. More on this later.

We played the fun game where we would hunch over, and pretend we were stalking the pack.  They did NOT like that and would track us and run up and down the enclosure where we were with the intensity that can only mean they were envisioning us as dinner.

Where are the otters!?

Paul going back to his roots

Anybody watch Scrubs?  JD and Turk would do this thing where JD would jump on his back and go 'Eeeggalllllle" as they ran around. Well, in the eagle enclosure, the boys decided to reenact this, and succeeded in both looking ridiculous/hilarious and scaring the crap out of a 6 year old girl who came inside at the last minute to look at the birdy.

Showin some bro love

Impending doom...kinda.

About 5 minutes after this picture was taken, the park closed and everyone was supposed to get out. 10 minutes later, David lost his sunglasses in the deep pit dug around this enclosure while standing on the rail, not that we told the park people that little bit of info.  So we went up to the front and let them know what happened, and they said they would send someone over to get them in a bit.

Which meant WE BASICALLY HAD THE WHOLE PLACE TO OURSELVES.

And apparently that is when all the animals actually come out. 

For some reason we were all spread all over the park, and a sudden flurry of texting occurred as we all started frantically texting to each other that the wolves/bears/jaguars/arctic fox/etc were out and wandering around.  There was a lot of running as we tried to see everything before they came and got David's glasses and we had to actually leave. It was pretty fun.

That brown blob? It's a bear. And all that was protecting us was that tiny little fence we're sitting on. what the heck?

Paul attempts to feed me to the bears, and is pretty happy about that decision

At night they have to cover the glass with big blue tarps - apparently birds keep flying into the glass

I look quite demented here

Eventually, they retrieved David's glasses and we had to actually leave.

Space needle on the way home

Are we somewhat near water? Are we at all hungry? We must have sushi.

This place was pretty good, and uber-trendy.  I'm kind of glad the only space they had was outdoors, or I would otherwise feel  a little self-conscious about my converse sneakers.

The rolls were very inventive and really good.  Also we were really hungry.  Add those together and we ordered so much the waiter had issues finding room on the table.  He was real nice though, and Paul's ability to unconsciously charm anyone he meets meant that when the manager turned up to the table to ask how everything was, we somehow ended up with him giving us some really nice sake.  I had no idea how that happened, and unfortunately I don't like sake, but he was watching so I had to drink it and not make a face.

Feeling a uncomfortably full we went back to the hotel and attempted to sleep, bc we had to get up at the ungodly hour of 4 am to make it on our flight the next morning.

Which turned out to be a good thing, bc the next morning turned out to be a disaster, with the drama level going from about a 1 to a 12. Also, we meet a crazy lady who reminded us of our mom  if she had been on Ritalin.