Back from Seattle
Pike Place Market, my favorite thing in Seattle.
My best friend Anne got married on Saturday in Seattle, so we spent the weekend there, returning yesterday morning on the redeye (remind me next time that a redeye from the West Coast does not equal enough sleeping time to make it reasonable to go straight from the airport to work). I haven't uploaded all the photos yet, but figured this post needed SOMETHING visual to show you where we were.
Neither Adam nor I had ever been to Seattle before, so I was really looking forward to this wedding for more than just the event itself. We wandered around Pike Place market a LOT, and I often thought to myself that I'd love to live within walking distance to it . . . until we wandered a few blocks away from it and found ourselves in a none-too-nice-neighborhood. It was strange, there were nice hotels next to total dives, in front of which plenty of scary-looking people were hanging out. Coming from NYC, you'd think I wouldn't even notice scary people on the sidewalk, but they looked different in Seattle than they do here. Or maybe I just wasn't expecting to see that at all given the beautiful surroundings . . .
Anyway. The market was full of gorgeous fruits, veggies, crafts, you name it. We had awesome clam chowder from 2 different vendors, and I bought some spices to bring home (gotta add to my new kitchen!). I also checked out a lot of the prices and it seemed to me that buying stuff at Pike Place, even the fancy organic stuff, still costs less than going to a regular supermarket in NYC. The most egregious example was chanterelle mushrooms -- I saw them in the market for $10/lb and almost fainted. I seriously considered buying 10 pounds to bring home and resell! There's really hard to find in the city, and I've never seen them for less than $40/lb . . . and just yesterday I spotted them at Dean and Deluca (granted, an expesive place) for $45/lb. When I pointed it out to Adam he couldn't believe any mushrooms could cost that much!
Although I just checked the price of saffron at Fresh Direct and it seems that I paid too much at MarketSpice . . . oh well, it's a souvenir!
I'll link to pictures once they're all up. There are, like, 40 just of the otters at the Seattle Aquarium . . .
Shana
September 18, 2008
I’m going to Seattle next month with the bf. I would love to hear your list of must-sees now that you were just there!