Treats and Tragedies on the Road: Valentine's Weekend in Seattle, Day 2 (Harbor City, Tako Kyuuban, Ellenos, Fado, Starbucks Reserve, Beko)

My alarm went off at 7:00.  Normally I don't bother setting an alarm while on vacation, especially since I have this odd habit of waking up with the sunrise (albeit only on vacation), but I'll make an exception on certain occasions.  This was such an occasion.  A little later on, at a more sensible time, the roommate would be taking her youngest to do the usual touristy stuff she had done with the tween on our previous trip.  Since said tween had already done that stuff, today she would be coming with me.

Once I had gotten her upright and we had both made ourselves presentable, we hopped on the Light Rail again (I could SO get used to having access to something like that) and headed to MY kind of touristy spot: the International District.  The agenda?  Dim sum.  For breakfast!

Seattle 2013 - Day 2 (P.M.)

I arrived back at the hotel, planning to lie down for a little while and digest.  The International District is closer to it than the Space Needle, so I figured I had at least fifteen or twenty minutes to relax before the ladies arrived.  As I stepped off the elevator I could see right into our room, where the cleaning woman was doing her thing.  Lovely.  I sat down in the hall and flipped through a copy of The Stranger I had picked up at one of the street corner dispensers on my walk.  The minutes stretched on, and before I knew it the elevator spat my traveling companions into the hallway.  Together, we all went downstairs to hang out in the lobby until the room was ready, showing each other the other pictures (at one point earlier in the day, Little Sister had sent a picture of the Seattle skyline as seen from the Needle to show me what I was missing; I sent her back one of a Bruce Lee mural) we had taken throughout the morning.

Bruce wins...

Treats and Tragedies on the Road: Seattle 2013 - Day 1

The alarm went off at 4:00 A.M.  I know this must be true, so I can only assume that some kind of horrible little imp scurried in and hit the snooze button twice, because I awoke at 4:18.  Since our scheduled departure time was 4:45 I immediately raced to the shower, thankful that as a male all I had to do was lather up, rinse off, and throw on some clothes and a baseball cap.  Once that was done, I started throwing anything which struck me as being necessary for the three days to follow into a backpack and a gym bag, trying to remember why I had thought it would be a good idea to pack in the morning rather than before the four hours worth of sleep I had managed to get.

All told, we were only about 20 minutes late leaving town.  Our merry band of travelers consisted of my roommate, my roommate's sister, my roommate's tween daughter, and of course yours truly behind the wheel.  After quick stops at Starbucks and Dutch Bros. (because I don't like Starbucks, and yes I'm aware of the irony), we finally hit the freeway.  To be honest, that's all I remember until we stopped at Baker Truck Corral to use their disgusting bathrooms (the men's smells overwhelmingly of urine, and apparently the ladies'  room reeks of marijuana) and buy some of their repulsive coffee.  After that it was all junk food, rest stops and bad jokes until we reached Snoqualmie Falls.

This is a waterfall.  Yes, I will be talking about food soon.