Seattle Adventures | Northwest Travel Photography

As you may or may not know, I graduated from Oregon State this past Saturday. In a whirlwind of craziness, I proceeded to attend graduation, move out of my house in Corvallis, move into my house in Portland, and then… drive to Seattle the next day! Wait- am I crazy? Yes! But it was well worth it. Back in April, I bought two tickets to see the Seattle Mariners play the Angels on June 15th as a birthday present for my boyfriend. To say that he is obsessed with the sport is a massive understatement. The man knows everything you could ever know about baseball… ever. Yet he can’t remember what he ate for lunch. I don’t understand him, haha. Our drive up to Seattle went pretty smoothly, but upon our arrival, we ran into some interesting situations. First, we went to the wrong Hilton. Yes. Wil’s boss at the Hilton he works for in Corvallis wrote the wrong hotel down on our “Hilton Employee Passport” (that got us $40 rooms – hell yes) so we went to the wrong hotel first. Whoops. Then we drove through two wrong parking garages before realizing the right hotel, the Arctic Club Doubletree only had valet parking. Oh. So we park the car and go inside to check in. Finally. Literally three minutes later, a hotel employee runs into the lobby to tell me that a taxi just backed into my car. This fine taxi, to be exact:

I run outside, and thank god there is only a small scratch on my bumper. I ask the driver for his insurance information, and rather than give it to me, he refuses and tells me to call the cops if I want it. So, the Doubletree calls the cops! I’ve been in Seattle less than an hour and I’m already involving the police. Awesome. The cop yells at the taxi driver for about 30 minutes and tells him that he is getting a ticket unless he gives me his information, so I finally get it written down. The Doubletree employees all feel really bad at this point, so they give us cookies and they waive the $32 valet parking fee. Wil and I finally get to go to our room.

We were so pleased. The room was gorgeous and the bed felt like clouds. Wil immediately proceeded to take a quick nap. After we collected ourselves, we headed out to the waterfront to get some dinner at Elliott’s Oyster House. There was a wait, so we took some photos and wandered around for an hour before being seated. I ONLY brought my brand new Canon 50mm f1.2 L with me on this trip, so I had a lot of fun taking these. I’m in love with the lens. And Wil too of course.

The food at Elliott’s was TO DIE FOR. I am going to be having dreams about the Wild Mushroom Ravioli for years.

(The restaurant was right on the water!)

We spent the rest of the night having delicious drinks at the hotel bar, including a sip of absinthe made czech style by our fabulous Latvian bartender Viktor. Such an interesting evening. I wish I had taken more photos. We couldn’t stay two nights at the Arctic Club because they were sold out, so we had to check out the next morning and go to a different hotel. We had some time to kill though, so we got bagels and went to Pike Place because Wil had never been there before. It was a gorgeous day.

Before we left, we stopped at a little produce stand in the market because a nice lady was kind enough to offer me a free sample of a pear. Time stood still. It was the most delicious pear I had ever tasted in my entire life. I ran and got Wil and made him try it too. We were stunned. Five minutes later we had purchased two pears of our own and proceeded to stand in the street dripping pear juice everywhere and dying of fruit-induced ecstasy. In case you are wondering, the pears were imported from New Zealand. No wonder.

Crappy photo from my old Sony point-and-shoot:

. After the fruit extravaganza we got back in the car and drove to our second hotel, The DoubleTree Seattle Airport and ran into a whole host of new problems. Wil had his boss fax our new “Hilton Passport” to the new hotel, but they sent it to the wrong fax number so we couldn’t check in when we arrived. We had to wait three full hours in the lobby and at the Subway across the street before Wil’s boss could re-fax the passport. I got bored and took a picture of Wil’s feet. Haha.

Eventually the front desk staff felt so bad for us that they let us check in anyway. The new room was HUGE and super awesome. As soon as we were ready, we got on a shuttle that took us to the light rail, and took the light rail straight to Safeco Field. Easy. We were sick of driving haha. The game was incredible. We sat in Row 13 in section 119, right in front of first base, practically on the field. We drank delicious beer, ate hot dogs and watched as Ichiro stole his 400th base and rookie Greg Halman hit his first major league career home run. The game was tied 0-0 til the last two innings, and then the Mariner’s pulled ahead and won 3-1. We were so happy!

And yes, I had to take an epic panorama:

We spent the rest of the trip enjoying more yummy drinks at the hotel bar, swimming and hot-tubbing. It was quite fabulous. I can’t wait to go back again. If you haven’t gone to Seattle before, I’d definitely recommend spending a few days in the city over a weekend. It’s worth the time and money!