Seattle: Day 1

Two weeks ago, I took my final trip of the summer to Seattle to catch a game at the 30th ballpark of the summer. This trip to Seattle was reminiscent of many other trips but unique in its own way. Similar to my trip to Denver, this trip was more of a vacation with a ballpark in the mix rather than purely a baseball trip. However it was different from the Denver trip in that it was more spontaneous. In Denver, my brother and I planned to hike a 14,000 mountain and we made plans to eat an early dinner with our Granny on Sunday afternoon. In Seattle, I had very few plans other than the baseball game and a football game the next day. Similar to my trips to the West Coast, East Coast, and through the Heart of America, I met up with friends from high school and college. In Seattle, I met up with friends from both places at the same time.

Although once I arrived in Seattle the trip was rather spontaneous, there was a lot of coordination that went into the trip prior its start. The first bit of planning was to meet up with my friend from high school, Al. Al now lives in South Carolina and, like me, is a huge baseball fan. When he first heard that I was doing this trip, he was very interested in going with me to a game. Since I had already knock Atlanta off the list early in the season, we identified mid to late September as a time we could meet up and Al was interested in going to Seattle. We were both able to get Thursday and Friday off work and booked flights that got into Seattle within 15 minutes of each other and Thursday afternoon. Even though Al's plane was delayed about a half and hour, meeting up in the airport worked to perfection.

The other bit of coordination was to meet up with my good friends from college, Brian and Mike, who now work in Seattle for Boeing. Brian and his roommate Roger, who I also knew and was friendly with in college, were nice enough to let both Al and I crash at their place. Since Brian lives within walking distance to downtown, Al and I took the light rail from Seattle-Tacoma airport to downtown Seattle. We got off the light rail on the south side of downtown and started to walk up towards downtown. Luckily for us it was a clear and about 70°. On the way we stopped and got a quick lunch in Chinatown. We found our way down to the piers where there is an aquarium, some tourist stores, a few restaurants, and ferries. Next, we meandered our way to Pike's Place Market, where we got a decent look at the fish mongers throwing a whole salmon across the stand to another fish monger who packages the fish. This appears to be more for show than function as they clearly uses an older fish and even invite onlookers to try to catch the fish. If we had gotten there early in the morning when people are actually buying fish maybe they throw the actual fish the customer selects. At this point it was late afternoon and headed up to Brian's apartment near most southern point of Lake Union. For dinner Roger, Brian, Al, and I got carry out from a Caribbean sandwich shop. I got the #1 (I don't remember the sandwich name) which had big slices of pork, large caramelized onions, and a sweet sauce. The fillings were great but the best part of the delicious sandwich was the bread. Apparently this is one of this highest rated restaurants in the Seattle area on Yelp. After eating, Brian drove us up to Kerry Park in the Queen Anne neighborhood in Seattle. This is the signature view of Seattle with the bay, Space Needle, Seattle skyline, and Mount Rainier (on a clear night) all visible. Once we got back to Brian's apartment, we hung out with my friend, and roommate of the past year, Mike. It was good to catch up with Mike, Brian, and Roger and it sounds like they are all doing well. Although it wasn't too late, I was looking forward to crashing as it had been a long day and I was still on Eastern Daylight Time.