We walked a few blocks south to Elm Roasters, so mom could have her local cup of coffee. That walk took us through Pioneer Square, which is the absolute shits. It's a ghetto's ghetto. Tons of tents, tons of homeless people, tons of grafitti. And signs about the atmosphere. They care about the world, just not the people in it. Anyway back to the coffee shop. After waiting outside 5 minutes, I got my chai, which was way too heavy on the ginger. The more chais I drink, the more I realize how hard it is to get a great one.
We took the D rapid bus north to Seattle Center, which is sort of the hub for museums and the tourist attractions. On the west side of the Center is the Climate Pledge Arena, which used to be the Key Arena. It's surrounded by apartment buildings and offices on the west side, the light rail doesn't go there, it's a strange spot for an arena. I couldn't get many good photos, it's still under construction. But during my near 48 hours in Seattle, I was impressed how many times I saw the Kraken logo on store windows, t shirts, masks, hats, etc.
Then we went up 600 plus feet to the top of the Space Needle, probably the city's top tourist attraction. Thankfully, we had a clear day so we got some nice views of the pacific, downtown, and the mountains. Right next door is the Chihuly Glass Museum. Dale Chihuly, who I think also had a hot sauce named after him, sculpts amazing glass works of art. I'd seen some of his work already in the Tampa area, but this was a larger facility, and included a theater playing brief films about his works. Below is "A Thousand Flowers."
With the heat rising, we rode the bus north from South Lake Union to Fremont. Time for lunch at Paseo, a total hole in the wall. Two tables inside, maybe six outside. Their trademark is the Caribbean Roast sandwich, slow cooked shredded citrus pork, topped with pickled jalapenos, huge caramelized onions, cilantro, and garlic aioli. It lived up to the huge hype. Sweet, spicy, juicy as can be. And so messy, as the divine combination of citrus juice and aioli ran down my wrists.
And don't forget the sides! The roasted corn is amazing, pungent spices, butter, parmesan cheese. Super tender kernels, a little spicy, super zesty. Great cobs, good thing we ordered one for each of us. I also liked the fries, they added some of the same spices to the thick cut potatoes and served them with an extra side of aioli. Now this is not your standard aioli. Most are white in color, this one was pink, it looked a little like Thousand Island. And it was so garlicky, that even I could taste it and that is saying a lot!
Good job having Mexican Cokes with real sugar, the way God intended them! The total meal came out to about $55, it may sound like a decent amount of money, but this place is unique in their cuisine and they do a great job with their execution. Fremont may not be my kind of neighborhood, but this is a place for everyone to check out.
Fremont is a very artsy section of Seattle, just north of downtown. Some would call it progressive, I would call it digressive because it's so liberal and you see so many crooked sexual flags flying around. They even have a statue of Lenin where they have a lot of political demonstrations and picketing. They even have slogans spray painted on it such as "my body my choice" but I think it's for vaccination passports instead of abortion. Just weird.
We also went into the vintage market which has tons of memorabilia and artifacts from the sixties, seventies, and eighties. They had figurines, clothing, music, all kinds of stuff piled on top of one another it was like a huge indoor yard sale. They wanted to check our backpacks though, and after the third time of asking, we decided we'd had enough.
We took the bus back to the hotel and booked two spots on the Seattle Underground tour, one of the most popular tourist attractions. The highlight was probably hearing about how hookers made so much money, but would identify as seamstresses on their taxes. And we even saw some of the first toilets, they're actually called crappers.
Then it was a 1.5 mile walk north to Cinque Terre, a modern Italian restaurant with a focus on seafood. The funniest part is I had made a reservation a week prior and mom found it two days prior. We even picked the same restaurant!
And the night was not over. One more bus ride south to TMobile Park for Mariners vs Athletics. It was a pretty good stadium, I was able to score two fans of craft bet for six bucks, I still don't know how that was possible. But by the seventh inning, we were spent and we took the light rail back to the hood. Of course it took about 20 minutes to find the train since Seattle does a terrible job of marking where to walk.
On the way back to the hotel, I was just walking, minding my own business, not saying a word, and all of a sudden, a glass bottle shattered about a foot away from my feet. Some asshole threw a bottle at me. That only reinforced what a lousy city this, it was such a relief to walk off the streets and enter the Courtyard doors.
No comments:
Post a Comment