First stop: Seattle

My awesome family dropped me off at the airport early on Saturday morning. While I endured the most turbulent planeride of my life, they got to go see the Frozen Four, so they probably got the better end of the deal. Once I recovered, though, I grabbed the train into Seattle and met up with Ben.

There were a bunch of Seahawks fans on the train, and as we were riding in there was actually a rainbow over the stadium. It looked like it was going to be nice out, but things quickly changed and Ben and I went on a "rainier than usual" walk through their neighborhood and then down to a bar to watch the game. Go Seahawks (says my temporary location-based alliance)!

My awesome hosts, Natalie and Ben!

When Natalie got off work there was a wonderful reunion, and she and I spent her weekend of Sun-Mon going on much less rainy walks all over the city. We saw the Space Needle and the fountains and art around Seattle Center that were built for the 1962 World's Fair. We went to a used book store. We saw fish-throwing and the "original" Starbucks at Pike Place Market. On Monday afternoon we took a long walk up into the hills to see some really nice houses, and when we got to Volunteer Park, the sky opened up enough to see the skyline and some of the sunset. It was a beautiful way to end our long hike! Besides sightseeing, food was a focus of our weekend, which we topped off by cooking a luxurious dinner of Ahi Tuna. Yum!

I could almost see some mountains in the background, but Mt Rainier stayed hidden.

Natalie and Ben were both off to work on Tuesday, but luckily my friend Zach was free, so we spent the morning walking along Puget Sound, looking at the sculptures in Olympic Sculpture park, and reminiscing about our days in the Brown Band.

In other news, I've finished knitting my first hat! The shape is a little bit funny, but for a first try (or maybe fifth, for the approximate number of times I had to restart) I'm pretty impressed with myself. Many thanks to Eric and his mom for their help!

Please excuse the mirror selfie

One more shameless self promotion before I go. Early this fall I heard of a new website that was meant to be like a Kickstarter for traveling - Trevolta. I quickly signed up and very slowly created a profile. One form of procrastination lead to another, and my page on the site only just went live. So check it out if you're interested and want to increase my pageviews, but please know that I'll send you a postcard just for being my friend.

Time to repack and make my way to SeaTac. Hopefully I'll have internet access from here on out. Talk to you again from the other side of the world!