President's Day Weekend in Seattle 2

I woke up at 8:30am and call K to make plans and meet for brunch this morning.

From my hotel in lower Queen Anne, I cut across Seattle Center to reach K's place in Belltown. From her place, we went to Macrina Bakery and Cafe. This bakery was mentioned in Hemisphere's Magazine 3 Perfect Days in Seattle and was extremely popular. Unfortunately, my late start to the day meant we had to wait for table. Since the cafe was rather small, I had to stand next to display cases full of decadent baked good while waiting. I got hungry in a hurry :)

After a 20 minute wait, we were seated. K and I both ordered the salmon scramble, which was a smoked salmon with scramble eggs and chive creme fraiche over bread. For drinks, both of us opted for Mimosa. I had the pomegranate and she had the grapefruit.

After a satisfying brunch, we walked to the waterfront by Pike's Place Market. The sun was shining brightly on this winter morning and the sky was especially blue. Over the azul colored Puget Sound water on the horizon were the snow peaked mountains of Olympic National Park. It was amazingly beautiful. My point and shoot camera could not do the scenery justice.

Pike's Place Market is basically an open air market full of tourist traps, the most famous being the fish toss at Pike's Place Fish Market. We found out that if a customer bought a fish, they would toss it, even to the customer! K and I had not intention of doing any cooking, so we passed on this opportunity.

Around the corner from Pike's Place Market is the first Starbucks. In Seattle, Starbucks are located a few steps from each other, but this one was extremely crowded. There was no clear sign to indicate this was store number one, but the Starbucks logo on the window was different.

From Pike's Place Market, we walked to Pioneer Square to take the Seattle Underground tour. Seattle was originally built on the flood plains. After a big fire, the city rebuilt, by raising roads to second floor height. The original first floor became "underground". Since this plan was communicated to building owners, underground doors and windows were not decorated. Hence, there wasn't much eye candy to see. But the tour itself was interesting and full of historic facts.

After the tour, we walked around Pioneer Square area a little more. This area is located near the stadiums and there are several sports bar. It also felt like a tourist trap and there wasn't much to see.

After browsing for a while, we walked along 4th Ave to Westlake Center, downtown Seattle's retail core. At this time, both K and I were a little tired. We decided to take the monorail back to Seattle Center and rest before evening activities.

At 7:30pm, K and I met up and walked to Pintxo. K and a bunch of her friends: S, J, Vik and Jessica were meeting for drinks and tapas. I ordered a hot toddy and a bunch of finger food. The goat cheese stuffed dates wrapped in bacon was delicious! I also enjoy the sweet Tequila Lime shrimp and seared Catalan sausage with red pepper sauce.

After dinner, we went to Twist for more drinks. I had a Millionaire Mojito and enjoyed it very much. Rana joined us at Twist and we chatted a little more.

By the time we were done with drinks, it was almost midnight. Rana wanted to go dancing, so K and I went with her to Frontier. K's friend Colin joined us at the club. In the beginning, we really like the music and but as the night move on, the DJ started spinning slower music. We were increasingly bored and decided to call it a night.