Seattle

“Just when you think your going on vacation… BAM! Food poisoning!” – this is how one sympathizer described our situation this weekend. Sadly, Bryan was on the receiving end of a quick and dirty case of food poisoning the night before our departure. Once again we spent the entire night before a trip completely awake, but this time with a lot more diarrhea and a about a gallon of barf to top it off. Assuming he had gotten it all out of his system and beginning to feel better, we decided to re-hydrated and head to John Wayne Airport. It was less than a minute from entering the security line that we realized that it was not all behind us. Right in the middle of the security line blocking the entrance to the metal detector, Bryan leaned over and hurled into a plastic bag. He spent a few minutes in a bent over position as people tried to squeak by in disgust. At this point we were just thankful that it wasn’t coming out the other end. After disposing of a bag of pure liquid puke we boarded the flight and Bryan endured a long and torturous trip.

Arriving in Seattle around noon all we felt like doing was sleeping. So while our travel companions Drew and Allison explored the city the rest of the day we were unfortunately confined to our hotel room trying to sleep and watched a movie. Despite her lack of sleep, Megan was a trooper and waited on Bryan hand and foot. But we know too well that Megan gets very cranky with lack of sleep and it began to come out that evening as she began cursing every detail about the W hotel that we were staying in. The hotel was nice but some of her complaints were valid such as the lack of black out curtains, lack of sound-proof windows and hallway noise. Others were just the crankiness talking such as the low sheet thread count and shower-tub existence, but preferably those things could also be fixed. Bryan got so used to Megan as a slave-wife that at one point when he was feeling better he began using her as a human cup-holder with out knowing it. Forcing her to hold his drink in between sips.

The next day we walked around the city visiting Pike Place Market and some shops before taking the ferry to the nearby Bainbridge Island. Bainbridge had a small little town named Winslow that we stopped in before walking along the shore trail back to the ferry. The best thing about the town was Churchmouse Yarns & Teas (I guess the owners just couldn’t decide which to sell so they sold both!) and a delicious ice cream place called Mora Iced Creamery with 48 flavors of homemade ice cream. Later that night we went to Canalis Restaurant, where we had an enjoyable meal, however, Bryan was still unable to put down much food and if you know Bryan’s love for fine dining you can imagine his frustration. The dinner was also filled with some memorable laughs. First, we had an incredible awkward bread boy who insisted on escorting Drew to the restroom, where he somehow recounted to Drew the whole of our dinner conversion (spooky). Then as Drew was exiting the restroom another patron was trying to push the door open while not looking he mistook Drew’s left pectoral for the door knob, creating a groping story that Drew could not wait to share when he returned tableside. The meal was finished eloquently with Bryan’s rendition of MJ’s classic, “Man in the Mirror.” Some of the other dinner guests may have commented that it sounded as if the whole song was performed in high notes MJ only achieved mid crouch-grab, however Bryan stands behind is performance.

Our final day was Easter Sunday and Drew and Allison headed out to an church service with a friend while we opted to sleep in and try to explore the city a bit more. We took a useless and rip-off of a street car ride to nowhere and the rip-off and mostly useless monorail down to the Space Needle. Combined it was nothing but a total waste of $9 in transportation that took us only 1 mile to the pointless area around the space needle. Plus there were some major creepers riding the monorail. From there we took a cab over to the Pioneer Square area where we walked around a bit and found that we quite enjoyed that area. It was the more historic part of town. The old city that was mostly destroyed in fire years ago is buried below street level. There is not much to see other than a cool toy store , book shops and a Utilikilts which is a hardcore kilt store attempting to make kilts mainstream clothing for men. We got the impression that in a few years it will become a hip thriving neighborhood.

So all in all sadly Seattle was a downer for us. We were really looking forward to this trip and given the circumstances we did the best we could but it is truly difficult to enjoy a vacation when you are tired, feel like crap, and repulsed by the thing you looked forward to most: food. We didn’t get to see a whole lot outside of the downtown area but here are a few things we learned: Even though we only spent about 10 minutes in Pike Place Market it was no doubt one of  the best things to see in the city and we wish we would have been able to go back. The busses are free, but don’t pay for monorail or the street car; taxis are useful as is the light rail to the airport. The W hotel is not as hip as they want you to think it is. Most importantly: Don’t get food poisoning before a trip.