Seattle or Bust

Very rarely do I post, "hey, look at what I did this weekend" posts. But this one was too cool to pass up.

The place: Seattle
The occasion: Jon's 28th birthday (yes, that's right, I'm dating a younger man or "robbing the cradle" if you will)
The cost: Priceless. (wait, does that even make sense?)

So here's an embarrassing confession: I've never been to Seattle. I mean, technically I have. I've driven through it a number of times and seen it from I-5. I've also been to the port when we had to leave on our Alaskan cruise. My freshman year of college, we begged our coach to let us have some time at the 3-story Old Navy. but that's it! I've never actually parked, got out of the vehicle and walked around.

So Saturday was a day being a tourist and all my traveling habits kicked back in: tons of people watching, uber-protective of my purse and completely paranoid for pick-pocketers, extremely thrifty with my money, except to splurge on food, and never putting my camera away because you have no clue what's around the corner. . .like a parrot doing a back-spring handstand in the palm of his owner's hand. (seriously)

So, first thing's first. . .

My mothership: enjoying a Venti Americano with room in the original Starbucks!

Above: Half of our breakfast: an apple cinnamon roll. (The other half, a spinach, cheese & egg peroshki was consumed too quickly to get a picture. It was devoured before we got our coffee.) My camera couldn't quite zoom in enough to pick up the drool. And it may have stopped working because my drool got into the innerworkings of the camera. Don't you hate it when that happens???

After debarking, next on the list was right across the street: Pike's Place Market. Flying fish, millions of samples of flavored almonds & hazelnuts, belt buckles, tempting t-shirts for sale that said, "trust me. I'm a nurse." (life rule #492: if you can make it at home with an undershirt and magic market, don't pay $10 plus tax for it.) AND, the most gorgeous flowers I've ever seen:

Seriously. These things are rediculously gorgeous. I'd go broke buying flowers all the time if I lived up here!

And then we come to the main event: the Yankee game. . .oh, whoops, sorry. I mean the Mariners game. I was just slightly confused because there seemed to be more people in NY garb than Seattle garb. And because it actually was Jon's birthday, and because I vowed not to waste money on any greeting cards until after I graduated, I sent him some b-day wishes on the Safeco Field jumbotron (this is also my submission piece for Girlfriend of the Year):

It was pretty sweet seeing his name up there.

Guess I better throw up one of the birthday boy since he was the reason for going up there!

Even though the Mariners lost (but won on Friday and Sunday), the game was a BLAST!
9 innings of baseball can be fun? Who knew???