Sunday, June 24, 2007

Too much eating!

DH and I took a long weekend down to Seattle for our anniversary. It was nice to get away for just a few days, and certainly cheaper than going somewhere exotic. It was a nice drive down too, sunny enough to be warm in the car, but not so hot that we were scorching in our long pants and shoes though.

We stopped off in Fairhaven, WA for lunch at the Colophon Cafe. DH had their bacon potato chowder while I had the African peanut soup. I'm glad I ordered a small as it was very filling and I was full all the way down to Seattle.

For our anniversary dinner, we went to some restaurant close to our hotel. Can't remember the name of it for the life of me, but it's some chain seafood restaurant for all the chi chi poo poo people. How else can you explain the fact that people were coming in for dinner at 8/9:00 at night? No one who has a family to go home to, or works normal hours would want to eat that late. Dinner was nice enough, DH's french onion soup was cheesier than a Disney movie, and my half a dozen oysters were divine. For dinner, he had the tilapia in a Jamaican rum butter sauce, while I had the marlin crusted with macadamian nuts and served with a mango salsa. The entrees themselves weren't badly priced at all, ($20ish per plate) but wouldn't you think that a more upscale restaurant like that could serve rice timbales that didn't have the stuff scraped from the bottom of the pan? I mean, I grew up with that stuff, so me is was more reminiscent of my childhood, but for a more typical client, don't you think they would've wanted their grains of rice all separated rather than a part of it clumped together?

Dessert was very nice, a chocolate tower filled with mousse, topped with blueberries and rapsberries, surrounded by a raspberry mango coulis.

I don't normally have a 3 course meal, but I couldn't resist that night, pig that I am. Plus, it was our anniversary dinner afterall.

The next day, we were headed down to the Sci-Fi and Music Museum, but DH needed to stop for breakfast. We didn't know where to go, but stumbled on The Five Point Cafe, which was unique to say the least. I didn't realize a bar could be open 24 hours, let along people would want to be drinking at that time of morning. The server looked like Bettie Page with an attitude, no she didn't have an attitude, but she looked like she could. It's not the sort of place I'd want to visit more than once in a lifetime, especially not after reading some other reviews on it, but it was certainly an experience.

The Science Fiction museum was amazing. Okay, totally cool for geeks like me who enjoy that sort of thing and can recognize some of the authors they talked about. What was really cool though, was the travelling exhibit of costumes used in some of the movies and tv shows. Like all good museums, they had some interactive exhibits (not with the costumes) that kept kids interested. The museum is linked to the Music Museum, which was not nearly as interesting. Great for kids because there was lots of interactive stuff, but really, what's more interesting, George Clooney's Batman outfit (or Robert Patrick's T2 police costume for that matter) or a piece of Jimi Hedrix's smashed guitar?

Dinner that night was next to impossible to find. We didn't want to do another big dinner night, even though our hotel was supposedly in restaurant row. So we drove around, and we'll be darned if we can find a good little local Mexican restaurant around there. Ended up going to Azteca, yet another chain restaurant. Is there no such thing as an independent place anymore. The food was so middle America blah, we might as well have saved the running around and gone to Red Robin. No offense to anyone who likes that sort of thing, but our idea of a good meal is to go where the locals go, where the food is homey and the restaurant is family run.

Today, we ended up going to the Museum of Flight. Managed to get there early enough that we could go check out the Concorde and Air Force One without anyone else being on the plane, so DH could take some cool shots. The museum also has their Space museum area open now, and boy are there some neat exhibits there. Pictures to be posted at a later date. We ended up spending about 5 hours in there, because there was so much to see. Well worth the price of admission, and we only encountered one real bratty kid (blame it on the dad for not putting a rein on the kid, I should've hit the dad with my umbrella).

8 comments:

Anonymous said...

"Cheesier than a Disney movie"...good one!

Up and down with the whole eating out experience, eh? You guys should have checked with a food/restaurant guide first, maybe.

I guess dh wouldn't want to go with the Healthy Highways guide, though, huh?

Gee, you mean a smashed bit of Hendrix's guitar isn't fascinating??

Bookworm said...

I read that line twice, shades. Very funny, Epi!

That "looked" like a super trip. All we have is a civil war museum. Yawn. Unless you are into that sort of thing. We have some wax figures of soldiers in our welcome center that are pretty neat, though. I really enjoyed that post. Even the Azteca link. Lively bunch, those mexicans. We have a local chain called Mi Toro (my bull. who the hell knows why). When someone has a birthday they come around and sing at your table. Imagine a group of drunken mexicans singing badly and singing it in spanish so you have no idea what they are saying. not really a tune at all. We asked a waiter once what they were saying, and he said it didn't have anything to do with birthdays at all. Something about manana, which is "tomorrow". I get embarassed when they sing even if it isn't TO me. My family knows better than to tell them when it is my birthday. They make you get cake icing around your mouth, put a big sombrero on you and break out the poloroid. They have a wall of people who fell into this trap.

Epicure68 said...

Hey thanks! Not bad for just writing while procrastinating. ;-) At this point, DH is happy with salad for a while now, that's what he took to work for lunch today.

Alot of people are fascinated by the Civil War, so it must get crowded during the summer. For me, war is not interesting at all, and the museum of flight did go into how planes were instrumental in WWI and WWII, but that was just depressing.

Thanks Rosie, I'm glad it was an interesting read. And I'm sure a lot of people would've found the Hendrix guitar more interesting. Course, those are the same people who go to Paris to check our Jim Morrison's grave and do the Elvis pilgrimage every year.

Are Mexican restaurants run by actual Mexicans? The Japanese restaurants here, unless they're high end, are run by Chinese people. Mi Toro, that's funny. Guess it sounds good as long as you don't translate it. Boy, if anyone tried that to me on my birthday, they wouldn't live to see "manana".

West Coast Wanderer said...

Does sound like a fun trip all in all (congrats by the way on the anniv!) - could you share the name of the hotel where you guys stayed? G and I were thinking about doing something similar in the fall - taking the Clipper down and will be car-less so staying somewhere downtown core would be ideal ;-)

Bookworm said...

Yes, actual mexicans own and operate the mexican restaurants here. BUT, the chinese restaurants employ mexican people. As long as they have some kind of accent, I guess!

My kid got so confused once that when a chinese waiter asked her if she wanted hot tea, she said "Si."

Epicure68 said...

Too funny Rosie! I guess it's good to be multilingual though. ;-)

Abby said...

I'm one of those people who visited Jim Morrison's grave in Paris! :)

Epicure68 said...

Oh man, I can't stop insulting people, can I? Are they going to name this new disease after me? It's kinda like Tourette's Syndrome.