Once Upon the Myers: Seattle

Scott and I went to Seattle the second week in October. I had a conference presentation and Scott joined me so we could have time together. Addison spent time in SC with all of the grandparents and Michelle. We are so grateful that family was able to watch her so we could make the trip.

My presentation went really well. In fact, it was awesome! It was a packed room and all of the questions and comments were both thoughtful and insightful, which is always great! I also attended some great presentations.

Other than that Scott and I just took in Seattle. It is a pretty amazing place. They have compost cans along side trash cans and recycle bins in most of the restaurants and coffee houses. I drank so much delicious coffee. The weather was cold but not bad. It really rained one day but the rest of the days weren't so bad. We also enjoyed all the local beer - they have a lot of microbreweries. We started our trip and ended our trip at Pike Place Brewery wishing we could bring home some of their beers.

We started out early and arrived in Seattle at 10:30am. All of our planes were on time and we never felt rushed along the way. We then hoped on the lightrail and headed downtown to our hotel. We had to trek it up a pretty steep hill to get there but it was only a few blocks from the station. Another great thing about Seattle was that it didn't feel like a big city and we were able to walk most everywhere. After checking in we headed to Pike's Place Market, where we saw the famous fish toss and walked around the large market, which is a large farmers market for locals to bring their goods. There are several fish markets, fresh flower stands, produce stands, a cheese making place (Beechers), the first Starbucks, among other restaurants and stands. We grabbed lunch at Pike's Place Brewery and enjoyed a beer sampler and the holiday ale. We headed to Rock Bottom Brewery before heading back to the hotel and crashing pretty early.

Our favorite beer!

Peppers hanging throughout the market. I wish I could have taken one home!

The next day we decided to do some of the touristy indoor stuff since the weather was nasty. So we headed to the Space Needle, The Entertainment Music Project museum (Nirvana and Jimmy Hendrix exhibits), and the Pacific Science Center. Then we headed to the shopping area and had dinner at Mexico, where I had the best enchiladas ever!

View from the Space Needle. So cloudy!

In front of EMP Museum

Sculpture in the museum - it spanned the two floors

Inside the Pacific Science Center

Naked Mole Rats - I was obsessed with them - so cool!

Butterfly house

Scott at PSC

The next day was my presentation. After the presentation we visited the waterfront area, played arcade basketball at the Bay Pavilion, and went to the aquarium. That evening we went to Rview (top floor lounge) in our hotel for a beer and then headed out to Triple Door for dinner.

Waterfront

Outside the museum

Scott and the jellyfish

this octopus was captured under the pier that the aquarium was on - she will be released back soon

The one clown fish kept chasing off the other one

View from Rview

View from Rview and a rainbow :)

On Wednesday I went to some of the presentations that morning. I really enjoyed hearing about similar research and discussing it with others. After the presentations we headed to Pioneer Square where we had lunch at Collins Pub (best food we had in Seattle!). We were exhausted after walking around for a few hours so we had dinner at the hotel and called it a night.

On our last day we went to the Fremont District. This was the only place we visited where we had to get a taxi and couldn't walk. We did a self-guided walking tour and had pie at PIE. We were in awe of the beautiful art and the house boats in this neighborhood! We headed back to Pikes Place Market and had chowder for lunch and then played more basketball at the arcade while we waited on the harbor tour. That night we packed and had dinner in our room. We had a long day of travel the next day and had the wedding weekend ahead so we didn't want to be more tired than necessary.