Fish & Coffee, Needles & Hockey, and Being (Almost) Stranded in Seattle

From Portland, we headed north to Seattle. Tom and I have both been here in recent years, but we still felt like it was a must-stop destination. We parked downtown and spent the first hour... looking for a hotel for the night. We're booking our lodging as we go - almost always for the current night. Sometimes it's easy and takes five minutes, but sometimes we can't find what we want at a price we like... like today. At least it happened in a city we'd already seen! We've fallen into roles on this trip that have worked pretty well so far: Tom is the hotel & restaurant finder, I'm the blogger. Here's Tom hard at work in Seattle:

After booking and canceling twice, calling about seven other hotels, and scouring countless places on Kayak, Hotels.com, Hotwire, etc., we finally found something that would do. It was now about 2:30 and we hadn't done anything Seattle-ish. So... we headed of course to Pike Place Market! We saw some fish-throwing, some gigantic crabs, tons of fresh flowers and produce, and lots of local artwork. If only every city had a market like this one!

After strolling through the market, we headed right across the street to the original Starbucks location. That's right - the very. first. Starbucks. cafe. When I came with my family, I didn't get anything here because of the line, and it's been haunting me. Today, I got a chai tea latte and wrapped up my unfinished business.

Park right by Pike Place Market where we sat while I drank my chai tea.

 From the touristy but fun Pike Place, we headed inland to the equally touristy Space Needle. This structure headlined the 1962 World's Fair in Seattle and of course has become one of the best-known symbols of the city. Tom didn't get a chance to visit this on his first trip to Seattle, so we bought tickets to ride up to the top for cool city views.

After the Space Needle, we hauled it over to a sports bar/restaurant to catch Game 7 of the Stanley Cup Finals. Seattle is just a stone's throw from Vancouver, so the place was packed with Canucks fans. Tom, having grown up in a suburb of Boston, was of course rooting for the Bruins. There were a few other Bruins fans around (me by default, a few men traveling on business), but we were grossly outnumbered. The place was packed, and we couldn't get a seat until the third period, but it was a fun, lively environment we really enjoyed being in. It was a sad night for Canucks fans, but with a goalie like Tim Thomas, the Bruins were destined to win...

We left full and happy after the game only to have our moods abruptly altered by this:

We had failed to notice that the garage where we left our car closed at 7pm. It was 8:30pm when we arrived. Our hotel was a 30-minute drive away. One hour and $50 later, we had our car, but had we not been able to decipher the tiny, inconspicuous phone number hidden away in a corner through the locked gate, it could have been a far worse night. The "street people" walking by pointed and laughed as we waited for somebody to come let us in. Apparently this is a frequent occurrence at this parking garage.

We finally made it out of Seattle and to our hotel! Up next: crossing the border into British Columbia.