I know a global pandemic and travel are not necessarily synonymous things at the moment, but back in September, my friend Rachel and I teamed up to do a whirlwind tour of Seattle/Washington state in three days. Rachel had never been west of the Rockies before, and flights were cheap when we originally planned this trip (April by the way as we were thinking covid wouldn’t last the ages it has). I figured we might as well go and see what we could see, which ended up being quite a bit actually as people are not traveling so if you do, there’s a lot more space and availability to do things.
As I obviously lived there for years, I let Rachel pick the things she really wanted to see on this trip. We started the Saturday after we arrived at Pike Place Market which was seriously less crowded than it would have otherwise been, but that’s not a bad thing.
We walked around for an hour or so looking at the various shops, since most were open. We walked down to the waterfront to see it and for lunch we stopped by Beacher’s where I introduced Rachel to the ‘World’s Best Mac and Cheese.’ š
One of the things Rachel was most excited to do was tour the Chihuly glass museum, so she had gotten us tickets to do both that and the Space Needle. I had been to the Chihuly once before as part of a corporate Christmas party I sang for in college. They’d let us tour the museum before we had to sing, so I’d seen quite a bit of it before, just not in the daylight. This was an incredibly fun thing to do, and again since there weren’t a lot of people, we could comfortably see all the exhibits both inside and out.
One of the neat things about Chihuly is that there is both an indoor museum space and and outdoor garden with both real and glass plants.
Once we’d finished at the museum, we went up the Space Needle. The last time I was up there had been when I first met Matthew, and they’d redone the viewing deck since then. It is pretty cool as the whole wall is made of glass. You can also now go down a level to what used to be the rotating restaurant and watch the city change beneath you (not as scary as it first seems).
Once we finished these attractions, we headed up to a birthday dinner with my good friend Anna, and then we hung out for the rest of the evening.
Sunday morning, we went to church at Messiah which was really great not only because we got to see all the lovely people there, but also because my parents came into town too! We were able to have brunch with them and my brother Cyril after church before they all headed back to Quincy. Rachel and I then headed down to the Museum of Flight as that was something else she really wanted to see. I did not take many pictures there because I’ve been several times before, but we had a good time. There’s so much to see there that you just can’t do it all in one day.
After that, I took Rachel up to the University of Washington to show her around as it is architecturally very similar to her undergraduate university Washington University in St. Louis. It’s always lovely to be back on campus especially since the fall colors were starting to come out.
That concluded our Sunday adventures because we had something really fun planned for Monday. Because there were things we couldn’t do/see, I thought it would be fun to give Rachel a driving tour of the western half of the state. We started early Monday morning heading east, and our first stop was at Snoqualmie Falls- a place I hadn’t been to in ages.
We then continued over the mountains stopping at an antique barn in the town of Thorpe. I believe Rachel was able to find something there that matched one of her tea sets, so she was very excited about that. We then continued on to the Columbia River. Rachel took pictures since I was driving, so if you want to see pictures of the river, see my Thanksgiving post for this year (coming soon). We stopped off at my parent’s house both to see the area and pick up Cyril and take him back to Seattle. Of course no stop in Quincy is complete without Mexican food, so we took my friend Caitlin out for lunch so Rachel could get a fairly authentic Mexican food experience.
On our way back to Seattle, we took a different road and headed up to Leavenworth which is a little Bavarian town near the mountains. This also had been on Rachel’s list, but it’s a neat place to see some lovely buildings and shop small boutique shops.
That was it for our trip! We flew back Tuesday morning after a long day of driving, but I think it was worth it. Most people when they come to Washington only see the mountainous, tree-filled, costal part of the state. While I love that, there is this whole other part of Washington that is stunningly beautiful in its own way and I think tourists miss out when they only stay in the Seattle area.
Anyways, I hope you enjoyed these pictures especially if you haven’t been fortunate enough to visit Washington. š I, of course, would highly recommend it someday whenever you’re feeling ready and comfortable to travel.
