seattle tourism 101 or almost two whole days with the family

you regular readers know that my father and step mom were (re)scheduled to arrive in seattle on friday. about 20 minutes after they checked into their hotel



leff and i met them in their room. (no, that's not their room. they didn't sleep in the pool, silly.)

after a brief reunion that included my receiving a box of goo goo cluster supremes (ca-ching!!) it was off to the locks. which is really all that we did the whole day.



my dad was really into the fish ladder. this is him taking a salmon's photo.



yes, we ate at the lockspot. you would pass that part of my "which cheap divey place should i eat at while visiting the locks?" quiz.



we also made quick stops at the ballard library so i could show them the green roof (also, i had some books to pick up. they loved the self checkout.) and epilogue where padre began his obsessive search for ruth rendel books. friday's tally? three.

after a parallel parking debacle where i almost (atomically) blew up after having a loaf of bread thrown at me through the car window (no, padre. it's not my fucking fault that there's only parallel parking. it IS a city.), ma famille surveyed my apartment. which, of course, they didn't get. but fine, whatever. i always hear that from them.

end day one.

begin day two.

saturday i tried to cram as much of downtown into one day as possible. which meant the monorail.






and the market. where i took photos of stickers



and the r2 box there.



after refueling at the crumpet shop (i got maple butter on mine in honor of canada day.), i gave padre the option of either taking the bus further downtown or walking.

he chose walking.

have i mentioned that my back wasn't entirely better yet? no? haha! well, it wasn't! it still isn't! hahaha!

anyway, after much window shopping, the mystery bookstore (rendell total 2), lunch at elliot bay and then book shopping upstairs (rendell total 4), we went to smith tower.

i'd never been to smith tower before. the view was awesome! here's one of leff's photos from the observation deck. (i spent most of my time in the china room because i'm afraid of heights.)



then it was a quick walk up to the main library



for valentine's amazing pigs



yes, pigs. in the library. i couldn't stop laughing but i think it might've been because of all the pain med that i'd taken by that point. no, i'm kidding. it was pretty entertaining and definitely weird to be watching pigs jump through hoops in a rem koolhaus designed building.

a quick monorail trip back to queen anne, a short stop at dick's to drop the family off so my step mom could meet up with her friend from the peace corps and i was done!

sunday was a lot more laid back than previous days since padre had to be in montana later that day. so breakfast at top pot,



a drive by the simpsons' quickie mart faced 7-11 on denny (i'll get photos later) and, after narrowly avoiding causing four accidents, a pit stop at kerry park.



thankfully, mt rainier was out because i'm sure it would've been my fault it it hadn't been. ha. haha.

what can i say? it was hectic and painful. i'm glad it's over. now though, i have to be bedridden again because of my fucking back. i'm really despising this invalid thing because there's a lot that i need to be doing. grrr!