Seattle!

Julie and I took a vacation earlier this month to the Pacific Northwest all the way down to San Francisco.  We had never been to Seattle so we wanted to go check it out, so we decided to head there for a few days, then rent a car and drive down the Pacific Coast Highway to San Fran to see Julie's Aunt and Uncle there.  We have a boatload of pictures, so I think we'll do this in a few segments.  First up is our time in Seattle.

We spent Memorial Day weekend in Seattle, which accidentally coincided with the Folklife Festival bringing out all of the hippies and just about everyone else in town it seemed.  Our drive from the airport was made much longer because of the line of cars heading downtown, right where our hotel was located.  But we got in just fine, and after a quick nap we headed out to see the town.  We stopped at the Pike Place Market first and saw the first Starbucks, the fish throwing butchers,  and tons of people looking around the market.

The first Starbucks!

After the Market we walked our way back to our hotel that was about a mile north.  We grabbed some hamburgers at a local favorite called Dick's.  Then we headed through the Folklife Festival and grabbed a snack and watched people by the fountain Key Arena and then turned in for the night.

Sunday morning we had a date set up with Theo Chocolate to take a factory tour.  The factory is in Fremont which meant that we had to either drive or walk two miles over Queen Anne Hill.  We choose to walk, and man they really mean it is a hill!  We woke up pretty early and had found out that there was a farmer's market by the factory so we thought we would go get some fruit for breakfast and then hit up the chocolate...  well we didn't know that the market didn't really start until 10 am, so we decided to find a coffee shop and get some breakfast there.  We found ETG in Fremont and it was a wonderful little place.  Then since we still had time we made our way over three blocks to find the Fremont Troll.  He holds a real VW Bug.

This is what Julie and I plan on doing when we retire!

Wonderful street food at the Market

That is a real VW bug!

Then it was about time for chocolate!  We had a great tour of the only Organic, Free Trade Chocolate Factory in the USA.  We learned that all their flavored chocolate is mixed by hand which is pretty impressive for the amount of chocolate they sell across the country.  You can find them at Whole Foods and REI.  After the tour we headed to the farmer's market and found some pizza for lunch.  After lunch we walked back over Queen Anne Hill and then headed to the Flagship REI store to pick up some camping supplies.

After we found everyone at REI we headed back to our hotel to get ready for our big fancy dinner at the top of the Space Needle!!    We had a great dinner, mostly because of the view, the food was fine, but a bit pricey, but then we were eating dinner in a rotating restaurant at the top of the Space Needle!  It was totally worth it!

The following morning we headed to Oregon!