9/3/2015

After spending one quiet day in Port Townsend, we spent the next whale watching. This was a birthday gift for Alex, but since I hadn’t gone since I was a kid, it was also a gift for me!

We left right from downtown Port Townsend. The area near Seattle is known for its orcas (among other wildlife), and we actually saw some porpoises the day before from a pier in town. There was a nice boathouse nearby, with a ton of crew shells in it – a surprise to me – and we talked to a really eloquent six-year-old about his dog while buying breakfast.

The weather was nasty – squalls of rain throughout the morning. Actually I kinda liked it, except for the stress of not knowing whether it would prevent us from seeing whales. The little boat we were on was filled with elderly couples and wood paneling. They had a good deal for bottomless coffee/hot chocolate. It was cozy.

We saw some crazy gyres of birds around schools of fish – usually a sign that whales are nearby, but we didn’t have any luck. It was still cool to see – just a ton of birds diving around.

Eventually the weather cleared up a little, and we saw what we came for – two orcas just outside the San Juan islands. It’s amazing that you can recognize these orcas by their markings, so we got a whole family history. Orcas are organized into pods, other whales that they travel with which have their own culture. But these two were basically loners, male and female siblings.

Tail slapping

They didn’t get too close, but it was a blast to see orcas in the wild. We even got to see some tail slapping (it’s unclear why orcas do this).

Pulling through a narrow inlet on the way to lunch, we got to see a small rock island completely covered in seals and sea lions. The stench was unbearable… but I do like sea lions.

Statue of Popeye

Letting us off for lunch, we wandered around Friday Harbor, a cute tourist town that you can see in a half hour stroll. We had a big brunch before returning to the boat. Our friend on the boat, the coffee/snacks guy, who looked like the prototype of 40-year-old distance runner, had suggested we check out a local mascot: a seal named ‘Popeye’ (so named because he was actually missing one eye). He floated in the marina, near the docks, snacking on anchovies thrown to him by locals and tourists alike.

The real Popeye

He looked pretty worn, to be honest – one flipper was crippled, but it was a cool opportunity to see wildlife up close (even if he wasn’t that wild).

Sailboat motoring away from Port Townsend

The return trip was less eventful than the trip out. There were rumors of various whales in the area. The weather had cleared up, but it didn’t help us find them. I did see a pair of porpoises out the cabin window.

That’s right, we got to sit right up front in the cabin with the captain… an honor I think would have been more exciting if I was 12.

Looking out at Puget Sound

We got back into town relatively early in the day, so we also took a walk around the downtown area (charming Victorian) and along the water to Chetzamoka Park, a garden/park with great views of the water… and lots of swings.

Who loves swinging?

It was a little drizzly, but totally worth it. I’d actually never visited this park again, and it was one of my favorite in town.

Garden in Chetzamoka Park

8/30/2015 – 9/1/2015

We spent two more days in Seattle mostly quiet. Alex wasn’t able to take one day off, so she worked remotely from our AirBnB. It was raining that day, so I ran some errands and also went for a run at a nearby park. It was cool but not chilly. I found a baseball.

View from AirBnB

That evening we went out to meet friends – Matt, who I grew up with in NY, and DJ, Alex’s friend from college (and roommate).

Obligatory duckface

We ate a Mexican place with Matt, who’s doing comedy in Seattle, before heading over to a nearby bar (stopping outside to play with the puppy statue outside Trader Joe’s).

Puppy!

The next day, we picked up our rental car to head out to the Olympic peninsula. I’d debated the various routes around the Peninsula… there’s a long driving route on highways that’s mostly boring. And there’s a ferry. I dislike city driving and didn’t want to drive through Seattle, but the cheapest prices were actually renting within the city center, so the ferry, which leaves from right in the middle of the city, was perfect.

Seattle from the ferry

Besides, it’s quicker, and has the best views.

Almost at Bainbridge Island

The car rental was slightly delayed… there were some scratches on the car, so the guy filling out the paperwork (this was at Enterprise, I think) was awesome and gave us 3/4 of a tank of gas… we drove that car for half a week and didn’t have to pay for any gas.

8/30/2015

We started the second day early, with a walk through Queen Anne, a neighborhood I was growing to like (a sort of dense suburbs with some good arteries for shopping). First stop: Kerry Park (photo up top). This is the park where all the south-facing photos of Seattle are taken, and it’s a great view. There’s a steep drop below it with an apparent elementary school at the bottom.

We were looking to walk along Lake Union, but apparently that’s not a possibility along the west side (highways interfere). Curving down, we went through the tech (Amazon) district. A fruitful stop at Goodwill provided us with Subway Sandwich-branded ’12th man’ hats to blend in with the locals (also: two beer glasses and a corkscrew for 50 cents). For those not in the know, the 12th man is the fans at Seattle sporting events.

Sporting fancy Twelfth Man hat at the game

Target: a Seattle Sounders game. I’d been anticipating this game for a very long time – since we started planning the trip. A Sounders game, in Seattle, against their bitter rivals, the Portland Timbers. That’s probably the best game in Major League Soccer each year, and it coincided with our trip. (It turns out the crowd agreed with this assessment: this was the 6th highest-attended MLS game of all time, with 64 thousand people attending)!

The view from the stadium wasn’t shabby…

Detouring through Uwajimaya Asian market to avoid the rain, we arrived at the stadium early. The atmosphere was great. The Sounders play in the same stadium as the Seattle Seahawks, so this was actually the first time I can remember being in an NFL stadium.

From left: Skinny Drew Carey, possible domestic assailant Hope Solo, badass Megan Rapinoe, and others

The pre-game was great (Megan Rapinoe, Hope Solo and Drew Carey did a little award routine in front of the crowd).

PITY!

There was also an awesome display in the supporters section, with flags unrolled so that a huge orca swallowed up a logger struggling to swim (Sounders devouring Timbers), and the crowd went nuts. The game was good, but I thought the Timbers played better. The Sounders still managed to pull off a 2-1 win due to a questionable call, so we saw some action and got to see the crowd erupt after a score.

Marination Ka Mai – best shave ice since I was in Hilo

Near the stadium there’s a water taxi, which we took over to West Seattle, my first time to this part of the city. We stayed along the shore here, which had a spectacular view of the city, and had lunch at Marination Ma Kai, a Hawaiian restaurant right on the water, where we indulged in tofu tacos and huge shave ices. I devoured them too quickly to get photos.

Floozies along the West Seattle shore

We strolled a nearby waterfront park and savored the view (and the weather, which was nice this day). A skywriter was trying to write “BLACK LIVES MATTER” above the city (this was right after the Bernie Sanders incident with BLM protestors), but only 4-5 letters are visible at any time so the message was mostly lost. I hope it was cheap to hire the skywriter.

Running back to the water taxi

With the sun setting, we ran back to the water taxi and started the trek north to our AirBnB, passing along the tourist sites.

Classic Photo

It’s quite a walk after a full day around town, and Uber was ~$5 to get back… so that’s what we did.

8/29/2015

Alex and I had visited some cities in the northeast, in the spring of 2015, but we hadn’t taken any time off since our November 2014 Italy trip. Finally, at the end of August, it was time to do some more traveling.

Alex hadn’t been north of California and wanted to see the Pacific Northwest, and I hadn’t been to Washington since 2013, so Washington State was a good compromise. We’d visit Seattle and the Olympic Peninsula.

Wide awake at the airport.

The trip out was pretty painless overall: I’d recently discovered that a ~90 minute public transit commute from my apartment to the Newark airport could be reduced to a 20-minute Uber/Lyft ride (for about $5 more). Totally worth it. Our flight was first thing in the morning.

Airplane View

We napped en route and I woke up in the air over Washington, which meant I got a wonderful view of the Cascades as we flew in – not to mention the sprawling Seattle suburbs.

Welcome to Klondike Gold Rush NHS

We didn’t have a lot planned for the first day: we’d get the main tourist sites, like Pike’s market out of the way, as well as checking out some of the other things downtown, like the new Seattle public library (awesome), and the Klondike Gold Rush National Historic Site (which I’d last visited 17 years before). I enjoyed these smaller sights. The only problem was something we faced throughout our trip: bad weather. After a serious drought during the summer, it rained 7 out of 9 days on our trip.

Memorial to Seattle Firefighters

The summer drought was so bad that there were a bunch of forest fires in the state, so everybody else was happy to see rain. Furthermore, there was a huge wind storm that practically knocked us over as we walked the streets.

Olympic Sculpture Park

When the weather finally cleared up, we played foosball and ping-pong in the park, then walked along the waterfront, making our way to the Olympic Sculpture Park, one of my favorite free locations in Seattle.

AirBnB Chickens

Refreshed by an Indian buffet, we went to our AirBnB. I’ll admit – I wasn’t sure what to expect. And it was a crazy place! There was a nice view over northern Seattle, and the person we were renting from had 3 units, including two tiny wagons he’d built himself.

Nibbler!

But the highlight was the animals: in addition to a small garden, thee were 6-7 chickens roaming the yard in search of worms. And two incredible rabbits we could pet (at first I thought these rabbits were Silkie chickens), but in fact they were Angora rabbits (named Nibbler and Tribble). To top it off, we got free postcards with studio-style closeups of the rabbits. Score!

05/24/2015

After a busy day on Saturday, we slept in on Sunday. We planned a day at the ball-game, seeing the White Sox play – and also going on a boat cruise. Rain and cold led us to skip the boat cruise. Even the game was touch-and-go for a while.

White Sox & Twins

It turns out that baseball tickets for the White Sox are insanely cheap. Seats were $5 apiece at the edge of the stands. So why not take a look? (There’s a reason that the tickets were so cheap, which is that the White Sox are not a good team).

View from the stadium

They played the Twins, and we were in the upper seats, but the view was great. It was cold and windy, though, and seemed pretty close to being a rain cancellation. I had fun, and as far as I can remember, this was actually my first MLB game, so that was cool.

Buddy Guy’s Legends

After the game we headed into the city, hoping to check out the park. But it started raining, and then pouring. Alex did some research and it turned out Buddy Guy’s Legends bar was just a few blocks walk from where we got off the L… and when we called, they said a live jazz show was about to start. For free. Sold!

Derek Trucks, Carlos Santana, Jeff Beck, Stevie Ray Vaughan, Eric Clapton, Jimmie Vaughan, Gatemouth Brown. Not pictured: BB King, Albert Collins, John Lee Hooker. Damn!

We hung out for a while: the band was a jazz trio (drums, bass, guitar), and they played almost exclusively Duke Ellington. The highlight was seeing a live rendition of Caravan, the “song” (read: drum solo) made famous by Whiplash. But the highlight of Buddy Guy’s was the insane memorabilia. Tons of great photos, guitars, and so on (including Muhammad Ali’s signed gloves).

Millennium Park on a rainy day

Then we walked back to Millennium Park and the playground (empty, but the slides gave terrible wedgies after the rain), and photobombing people near the Bean. We saw the concert hall in use, but only long enough to capture the final minute of a classical concert.

Our AirBnB room

Dinner was at Geja’s Cafe, a fondue place recommended by Alex’s father. I’d never eaten fondue at a restaurant before, and it was fun. They forgot our wine, so when they finally delivered it, it was on the house. Can’t complain about that.

Strange building… can you guess what it is?

Finally, we returned to our AirBnB. This was north of Wrigley Stadium, and a really nice location. It was just 5 minutes from a bar that used to host Al Capone, and there was this great big building near the main street that we spent two days trying to figure out. Turns out it was the rear of the Uptown Theater. It looked amazing, but was being renovated (or at least, was closed to the public). I’d love to have been able to check out the inside!

5/23/2015

Last weekend, Alex and I went to Chicago. Tickets were cheap and the time worked out for an optimum-length Memorial Day weekend: from Saturday morning to early Tuesday morning. We had a blast, and Chicago was one of my favorite cities. I was really impressed.

What timing!

We arrived in Chicago at 10 AM and took the El train into the city, right near the main district, the Loop. We saw some streets were closed off – it was the Memorial Day parade! Alex found a great restaurant, and we sat around on an outdoor patio for brunch and watched the parade. Meanwhile, we drank a flight of beer. All the beers were local, but hands-down our favorite was a beer called Not Your Father’s Root Beer, which had a remarkable 19% ABV – and yet tasted almost exactly like root beer (with a whiskey-like warmth).

It was the end of craft beer week

The parade was great – lots of marching bands, color guards, JROTC from local high schools, some military trucks and hum-vees, floats, horses, and a whole lot more.

But my favorite was no doubt the Trump-like policeman who stood near the restaurant.

Great spot for concerts

Chicago is known for its beautiful lakefront and parks, and we knew we had to check them out. There’s a lot to see: great open-air sculpture, a stunning concert hall. Gardens, Lake Michigan, and a great playground. We also got a ton of free stuff in Chicago: wine, lemonade, socks, coffee – and a lot of sights were free too. Can’t beat that.

The playground was probably our favorite location in the whole park. It seems like it opened pretty recently, and there’s all sorts of crazy things: they had a huge complex that looked like London bridge, which was just overrun with kids. At the top of the towers, adults were few and far between, and it felt something like Lord of the Flies.

View from the slides

Kids have no idea how lines work, but I didn’t mind the wait: the park is right in the middle of the city, and the views are beautiful. And it was worth waiting, anyway: the slides were huge. It was unclear to me how this place existed. It seemed like a certain target for lawsuits.

We took a walk along the lakeshore, and also saw Navy Pier… but we got away as soon as we could. It’s basically the Times Square of Chicago, but they conveniently located it away from the good parts of the city. Wish we could move Times Square out of Manhattan…

In the afternoon we checked out the Lincoln Park area and went to the zoo for a few hours as a stop on our way to AirBnB.

Ornery-looking owl at the zoo

It’s a great zoo, and like so much else in Chicago, it was also free. We got to see tigers, hyenas, all sorts of birds, kangaroos, zebras, and so on.

Baby monkey!

I think my favorite animals were the otters, which we got a glimpse of, and a tiny baby monkey we saw with its mother in a large outdoor enclosure.

Not to mention the wonderful sculptures…

We checked into AirBnB, met our very nice host, and then went out for a Chicago specialty… deep dish pizza at Lou Malnati’s. I’d gotten recommendations for this place from a few people as authentic Chicago food… it was so rich, and so cheap. We got a medium pizza, and had to bring half it home, the food was so intense. But it made for a great breakfast the next day!