Seattle, As Told By My Wife

As promised, ProjectNCK's first guest blogger (my wife) tells of our weekend in the Pacific Northwest...



THURSDAY
After Sean picked us up at the SeaTac airport, our first stop was the Google offices in Kirkland. Sean gave us a tour of his office there. I signed a pretty lengthy non-disclosure agreement before we looked around the offices, so I’m probably not supposed to tell anyone this, but Neil and I beat Sean at foosball there. The Google offices just rock. Very awesome working environment. If Google offers you a job, take it.

Sean dropped us off at his apartment and returned to Google for the rest of the workday. Neil and I walked through downtown Kirkland and to Lake Washington and wandered around the waterfront for a few hours. We saw some really spiffy model homes (fireplaces built into the walls on the front porch!)… “How much do you think that one is? $700,000?” “Wow, no, that’s gotta be $1,000,000” (turned out to be $2,950,000).

We went out for pizza then returned to Sean’s.

FRIDAY
Sean took the day off work. Neil and I were really pumped to find that OPH is in Kirkland! So after a tasty breakfast, we took the bus down to the monorail station (amid plenty of quotes from the Simpsons episode where Springfield gets a monorail), where we discovered the monorail was not in service. So we walked through Belltown and went to the Sci Fi Museum. The original pencil art (1905) from War of the Worlds was awesome; the cultural analysis of the Jetsons was interesting. I’m glad that Sean pointed out the highlight of the museum to me. Frankly, I was surprised to find so much interesting stuff there, but I guess I’m geek enough for it. We then went to the Experience Music Project . We checked out the Jimi Hendrix exhibit (fascinating stuff, really thorough history) and the guitar gallery. I had a bit of a headache and was eager to leave the EMP, so we weren’t able to check out the Double Take exhibit, which looked interesting.

From there we headed over to the Space Needle, which gives you a great view of the city.

We found some above-average burritos for an early dinner, then returned to Sean’s for some Badger hockey (shape up, boys) and beer. After the sad game, we decided to go back to the Space Needle for the night-time view. It was definitely worth it to go back to get both views.

Went to Shorty’s for some beer and nachos, then back to Sean’s.


SATURDAY
Watched the Badger football game, had some Chinese for lunch, and headed down to Pike Place Market for the rest of the afternoon. The fish-tossing is just a small part of it – it’s a farmers’ market/street vendors/etc., and made for a nice afternoon. We followed it up with some more disappointing Badger hockey back at Sean’s.

Sean has a Roomba. He didn’t buy the more expensive version (the one that you can program to turn on at a specific time), but he did train Sturgis to turn it on, which Sturgis did twice on Saturday. Not to be outdone, Nox entertained us with some classic Nox in a box.


SUNDAY
We all slept in (ahh, glorious vacation! Sleeping in three days in a row!), then headed to a greasy spoon for a late breakfast before Sean took us back to the airport.

In all, a fantastic weekend. A great introduction to the Pacific Northwest – thanks again to Sean for showing us a great time.