SEATTLE: OUR 4-5 DAY GUIDE - PART II

SEATTLE - DAY 2:

As we ported, it was drizzling/raining quite a bit (getting the true Seattle experience). We got a town car to take us to check-in at Hotel Max. Unfortunately our room was not ready yet but they offered to hold our luggage for us. They told us our room would be ready by 4pm (for sure) and we would receive a text message as soon as the room was ready. To kill some time, I noticed a Starbucks across the street so we headed on over. We chilled at Starbucks people watching for a bit and then we decided to go see X-Men: Days of Future Past at AMC Pacific Place. Not to spoil anything but it was good lol. After the movie, we decided to get lunch at Serious Pie. It was 2pm so it was a pretty late lunch. We decided to go with the Roasted Seasonal Mushrooms &Truffle Cheese pizza, and the Soft Eggs, Smoked Proscuitto, Pecorino sardo, Arugula pizza. Everything was very good. By the time we were almost done with our food, our waitress brought over the happy hour menu! I would totally recommend going at happy hour instead because it's SOOOO much cheaper. This meal ended up being pretty expensive and it was just pizza!

special dessert: banana cream pie from dahlia's bakery

After lunch, we headed back to check in at the hotel. It was actually weird because they never texted us that our room was ready. We unpacked our stuff and rested for a bit before deciding on what to eat. We decided on sushi at Umi Sake House. This place had decent reviews and the ambiance was definitely a surprise. The place looks extremely small but if you go all the way back, there's an outdoor area that's really modern looking. The sashimi, as much as the reviews say the fish is good, was not the freshest. I would probably only recommend getting rolls here. The uni definitely tasted like it was sitting out for a bit. I will say that the Black Cod Kasuzuke was absolutely freaking delicious! The flavor was just indescribably good. I would probably recommend coming here for the Black Cod, drinks, and rolls.

black cod kasuzuke

omakase

SEATTLE - DAY 3:

Woke up the next morning and we were ready to do some touristy shiz niz. While we were getting ready, I went on Yelp and tried to make us a reservation at Tilikum Place Cafe (which is close to the Space Needle and other touristy stuff we were planning on doing). It was around 9:30am when I checked for available reservations and the earliest time they had was at 11:45am. After we finished getting ready, it was around 10:45am so we walked over to see if we could get an earlier time to get seated. They said the wait time was about 45 minutes and they could call us when our table was ready so we put our names down and walked to Seattle Center. One of the people that works at our hotel told us about the Folklife Festival that was happening that weekend so we checked that out for a bit.



We also checked out the outside of the EMP. It looks so cool! It's as if the Disney Concert Hall started melting lol.

After walking around Seattle Center, we got the call to go back to the restaurant so we headed on back.

We got the bread with the homemade jam, a side of their homemade sausage, the Classic Dutch Baby and the Sweet Dutch Baby and some drinks to start. OMG their homemade jam was so effing delicious. Their bread and homemade jam... *makes O face*. This was my first time having a dutch baby and it was pretty good.

warm bread with homemade jam

classic dutch baby

sweet dutch baby

homemade sausage

After eating all this yummy deliciousness, it was time to burn it all off by walking our butts off. We headed back to the Space Needle where it was now PACKED. It was around 1pm when we got back and the line to buy tickets to get to the observation deck of the Space Needle was crazy. Keep in mind this was Saturday of Memorial Day weekend so it was expected. Our call time to go up wasn't until 2:30pm so we walked around the Folklife Festival a bit more.

We did a bit of shopping in the little shops as well. I got 2 rings and Tony got this little homemade tanker toys for his cousin's son. Then it was time to go back to the Space Needle.

i spy with my little eye...

this was brand new information

After the Space Needle, we headed over to the Chihuly Garden and Glass Exhibition (we bought the combo tickets) which I will talk about in my next post! Hope you enjoyed Part II of our Seattle adventures! Stay tuned for more good stuff!

Happy Friday everyone!

SEATTLE: OUR 4-5 DAY GUIDE - PART I

Recently, we spent a few days in Seattle before and after our cruise to Alaska so I'll be breaking up our "holiday" into a few parts. I had a few questions for my friends who had already gone to Seattle so I thought I'd create this post to give you an idea of how much you can do in a day in Seattle. I'm still working on the Alaska video so I think I will do all the Seattle posts first and then I'll do the Alaska post.


FINDING A HOTEL:
For most people coming to Seattle, you'll either decide to stay near the airport (in which they have complimentary shuttles to take you to the hotel) and rent a car or stay in Downtown (near Pike Place Market). For those who decide to stay in Downtown, the prices will be about double (if not triple) the costs of the hotels near the airport. If you are not going on a holiday weekend, I would highly recommend placing a bid on Priceline. Look on different forums to find out what people are bidding and you can usually find some pretty affordable deals.

We ended up staying at Hotel FIVE before we hopped on our cruise (1 night) and Hotel Max after we came back (4 nights). The prices ranged between $150-$180 per night. As you can see from the picture, Hotel 5 is right next to the monorail but the monorail has only 1 stop at the Seattle Center (which is where the EMP museum and Space Needle are). Both places had great customer service but Hotel FIVE is definitely more recently renovated and more modern than Hotel Max. Hotel FIVE's bathrooms are to die for although watch out for that crapper because man oh man, it scared the bejeezus out of me the first time I flushed. Ladies and gents, it was hecka LOUD. Hotel Max is a bit on the older side in terms of the bathroom appliances (? is that what they're called? lol) and such so if that kind of stuff gives you the heebeegeebees, then I wouldn't recommend it. Tony was saying our room at Hotel FIVE did feel a bit like a dorm room though. Both places offer Wifi but it is not complimentary. Tony booked the hotels thru his work so we got complimentary Wifi but otherwise, I think you have to pay. For Hotel Max, I think you can get free Wifi if you like their Facebook page.


SEATTLE DAY 1:
Arrived at SeaTac airport at 3pm. We stayed at Hotel FIVE in Downtown for our first night in Seattle. I checked out a few places for transportation from SeaTac to Downtown: Lyft, Uber, private shuttles, public transportation. Because we had a checked bag which was quite large, we originally wanted to do Lyft (for some reason Uber wouldn't give me a quote online). Unfortunately, when we got to baggage claim, I began searching for available drivers in the area. There weren't any. Then finally 1 popped up and I thought "Fantastic!" but when I clicked on "Request a Lyft" the person did not respond. I estimated that a Lyft would have cost $25. Another option was the Light Rail which is the one we ended up going with. At $2.75 per person, you really can't beat it. The only problem is that our hotel was about 4-5 blocks from the Westlake stop. It wasn't that much of a walk in actuality. I would highly recommend the Light Rail to anyone traveling to Downtown from SeaTac. It's very similar to taking the BART out of SFO. It takes a little less than an hour (estimated 55 minutes) to get to Downtown.

Once we checked into our hotel, we wanted to catch some of the happy hours that were around. If there's one thing people in Seattle are great at doing, it's drinking. Doing it and doing it and doing it well. After speaking with the hotel staff, who were more than happy to point us in the right direction, we decided on The 5 Point Cafe. GREAT happy hour menu and by great I mean dirt cheap. We got a burger and fries, their Chicken Fried Bacon, and 2 beers all for $20 including tip. When I got the bill I thought, "There's actually a place with food cheaper than SGV?!" This place was also on Anthony Bourdain's Layover if there's any food show addicts out there. I will admit that if I wasn't traveling with Tony, I'd be a little intimidated by going to this place. There's an outdoor seating area and it looks like a motorcycle gang stopped by for a few drinks.

After our "appetizers" we decided to travel west to Pike Place Market. There we found Rachel's Ginger Beer which our friends had been raving about on their recent trip to Seattle. Seattle was having a heat wave (it was 6pm and 79 decgrees) so having the Pink Guava Ginger Beer was super refreshing.

enjoying the nice view of the waters while enjoying some ginger beer

original starbucks - let the lines begin!

me at the original starbucks

A lot of the places in Pike Place Market were closing up shop so we quickly walked around just so we knew where everything was and stumbled upon the gum wall! We left our mark :).

After doing some more walking around, we were deciding on a place to eat and The Pink Door came up as one of the highest rated places in Downtown Seattle. We decided to give it a try and thank goodness we did because the food was absolutely amazing! We actually went back on our last night in Seattle and got exactly the same thing again and it was just as amazing. I would highly recommend it if you like Italian food. They had live music playing on Thursday night and it was super romantic. They also have an outdoor seating area which was where we sat the second time. I got the papperdelle and Tony got the lasagna. The papperdelle was absolutely delicious. The pasta tasted homemade and was extremely thin, to the point where if it was any thinner, it would break. The flavor was also amazing. I love spicy food and often times I end up adding red pepper flakes to everything to make it more flavorful but I didn't even think to add anything to this. The pesto lasagna was also delicious but I would say the papperdelle was even tastier!

papperdelle - melt in your mouth delicious!

pesto lasagna

One of the things that Anthony Bourdain mentions on The Layover is that because all these places are near or in Pike Place Market, you wouldn't expect them to be any good. In any other city they would just be tourist traps but these places are actually amazing and they really don't need to be. Super kudos to these places for making my stomach an extremely happy camper.

After dinner, we were pretty tired so we walked back to our hotel.


SEATTLE DAY 1.5:

Started off the next morning with breakfast at Seatown which was one of the places that Anthony Bourdain visited on his show as well. I ended up getting the same sandwich that he got on the show. It was pretty good. Tony got the congee because we didn't know what the hell congee was. Apparently it's just porridge lol. The porridge had pretty good flavor as well.

the view from inside the restaurant

cinnamon booze crunch and seatown mary

fried egg sandwich with dungeness crab

jasmine rice congee

After breakfast, we headed back to the hotel to pack up and check out of our hotel. We then got a town car to take us to the cruise terminal which was $18 (not including tip). And we were off on our cruise!

Stay tuned for the rest of the Seattle posts!

Thanks for reading!