Skip to main content

At Home in Seattle


Our last two nights in the USA are being spent in Seattle. That means we really only have one day to visit the city, but I’m not worried about that because I plan to come back one day and spend more time here someday. When planning the trip I thought I’d book us a hotel because we spent the last 12 nights in Oregon and Washington camping. Instead I found a bed and breakfast, and it easily ranks in the top 3 places we have stayed on the trip so far (in direct competition with the hobbit houses and the Earthship)!

There are so many things to like about the Chelsea Station Inn. It is in a quiet part of Seattle, and it is a 4-plex. We are occupying one of the ground floor units, which has a spacious living room, a dining room, a small kitchen, a bedroom, and 1.5 baths. In addition, we have laundry machines, access to barbecues and a beautiful patio, snacks and drinks (including grownup choices!), and hot breakfast delivered to the room each morning. We are very much at home here, and overwhelmed by the wonderful feeling that our hosts truly value our business. Too often it seems like hotels are looking for every possible cost savings measure, and one is made to feel like every request is an inconvenience. Not so here; the small conveniences and treats are absolutely delightful. We feel like pampered guests rather than nameless patrons. This place is exactly what we needed to finish off our 3 month visit to the USA.

Other than the fact that it is REALLY nice to sit on a comfortable couch and listen to some great music, we are especially pleased with the fact that we have a kitchen. We were able to make cheeseburger pizza (a family favourite) last night and enjoyed fish tacos on the patio this evening. The ability to make and enjoy your own food is a wonderful things. After a day walking around Seattle and enjoying some fabulous food at Pike Place Market it was so nice to know that we could relax as a family and take our time with dinner. Such a great way to end the day.

Today was Memorial Day. We visited the City Centre (near the Space Needle) and enjoyed checking out the performers and vendors that are part of the Folklife Festival. It reminded us of Kempenfest in Barrie and to tell the truth we felt very much at home. Seattle is probably the one city we have visited that feels most like being in Canada. It was really neat to see the space needle to check out the neat buildings and sculptures nearby. The kids enjoyed the playground, and we walked through the Olympic sculpture park on the way to the waterfront. We were glad to reach Pike Place Market before we got too hungry. We enjoyed a few great treats...cinnamon almonds, chicken dumplings, smoothies, cheese curds, and finally some delicious ice cream. (I had an ice cream cocktail myself...because why not?) It was a really short and sweet visit to Seattle, but we are determined to return. It’s a great city to walk around and there is so much more for us to see!

Tomorrow we will return to Canada after 93 days away. We are really excited about the last phase of the trip. It will be nice to start reducing the number of kilometers between us and home.

Pizza!

City Center

Space Needle

We loved this sign


End of our yummy visit to Pike Place Market

Fish tacos in the backyard of the inn after a great day

Breakfast on our last morning in the USA















Labels:

Comments

  1. Lightsmith4 June 2019 at 13:05

    Sounds like Seattle was just what you needed!
    As for the sign...it is amazing! "Scolding wives, panicked fathers. If you drop your baby, we have tiny wheelchairs!".

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Ontario is Very Big

Today is the last day of the trip. We have been in Ontario for nearly a week, and driving across this huge province has been an education on its size. We knew it was big, but now we have an idea of how big ‘big’ is. As soon as we entered Ontario the landscape was becoming more familiar. We were back on Canadian Shield territory, with rock cuts along the highway and lovely lakes dotting the landscape. We stayed at Aaron Provincial Park the first night. It was a beautiful park. Our campsite was on a small peninsula which allowed us to enjoy the sunset and sunrise. It is definitely a place I would come back to if we make this trip again. The next night we passed through our last time zone change on our way to stay in Thunder Bay at the home of a friend. Deb, John, and Noah were great hosts. We enjoyed the opportunity to share a meal and conversation with other people! Their home is lovely and back onto some really gorgeous country. We loved hearing about life in Thunder Bay and...
1 comment
Read more

Manitoba

Manitoba June 20, 2019 Yesterday was a day for everyone to just relax and recharge one’s batteries. The kids played at the playground and beach at Echo Lake. I went for a 10km run, a first in a while and therefore tough. Today we headed out on the 3.5 hr drive to Riding Mountain National Park in our penultimate province: Manitoba. We’re staying at Wasagaming Campground that has more than 700 sites.  The visitor centre had some really well done taxidermied animals: wild cats, black bears, owls, deer. We also walked to the beach of Clear Lake, which is lovely. Troop moral is a bit low these days. Lucy and Amy are quite home sick from what I can see. Miriam is quite happy to plan things like the pool game at Grollis’s house a week after we return. I’m sad that less than two weeks of our trip remains and then only 2 months before going back to work. June 21, 2019 Last night Lucy came back running from the washroom. She was freaking out because she had discovered...
Post a Comment
Read more

Trip Blanket

Back in the fall I spent some time brainstorming ideas about how I could knit a blanket with yarn I picked up during our epic roadtrip. I wanted to include data (such as km driven, km hiked) in the blanket somehow. I knit a couple of prototypes and got some great ideas and advice from Lisa Noble ( @nobleknits2 ) It is thanks to her that I tracked homesickness and created our 'getting along index,' which I agree makes it much more personal. The photo here shows the orientation of data in each of the 19 squares that code for a state or province. The state/province abbreviation and number of days we slept there are noted at the bottom. One side of the mitred square gives the number of km driven and the other side has number of km hiked. Homesick index and getting along index are at the top of the square. I used morse code in another colour for the abbreviations and for the distances. The rest are just indicated by a number of stitches in a different colour. The square below...
1 comment
Read more