At the end of August, my mom and I flew to Seattle and met up with my sister for a road trip that would take us back to San Francisco over 5 days. We spent the first two days touring Seattle. We visited the Space Needle, Chihuly Gardens, and went on a whale watching tour the first day.
Space Needle from Chihuly Gardens:
My favorite piece at Chihuly Gardens was this glass chandelier:
We got to see a pod of Orca (Killer) Whales:
On our second day in Seattle, my mom and I took a food tour through Pike Place Market. I would highly recommend this tour – the food and our guide were both wonderful! We tried fresh donuts, smoked salmon (and one of our tourmates got to catch the fish!), Beecher’s mac-n-cheese, Chukar cherries, clam chowder, piroshkies and crab cakes. My favorites were the savory piroshky and the clam chowder.
The original Starbucks in Pike Place Market:
Mom enjoying her clam chowder:
We stopped along the way in Oregon to do a little shopping, but not much else – just driving. We spent one afternoon in Portland eating from food trucks and walking around, so I think Bradley and I will visit there again in the future to really experience it fully. Once we got into California, we made our way to the Redwood National Forest. Bradley and I had only ever made it up to Muir Woods before, so this was a treat. One of the really interesting stops was called fern canyon. Towering walls on both sides of you covered in ferns – it was beautiful.
Once we got into San Francisco, Bradley flew in to meet up with us. We spent the rest of the week trying a few new things, as well as revisiting some of our favorites. We went back to the SF Botanical Gardens:
We also caught a Giants game. They have a beautiful stadium, but I was so over being hot all week (strange to say about SF) that I spent a lot of the game watching on tvs in the concession stand area.
We researched some new places to eat this time, ending up at a hole-in-the-wall place in chinatown in which very little english was spoken and we ate our food huddled on a door stoop. One morning we ate at a french brunch place called Zazie. We also tried a good burger place in Berkeley called Eureka and wandered around a game shop nearby.
On Sunday we visited a strategic partner of Northpoint called New Vintage Church:
