Seattle: Day Two

No tour of Seattle's Starbucks would be complete without a stop at the Olive Way store.  This is the newest concept in Starbucks- emphasis on handcrafted beverages, the old-school coffee shop/cafe atmosphere, as well as alcohol served after 4pm.  Kraig was, again, thrilled to see it in person. 

Hey, Dan made it into a photo!

 Outside of Olive Way

We also drove up to the Fremont neighborhood in Seattle.  This is a very eclectic, hippie, veg-friendly, alternative neighborhood, and most reminded us of home (Portland).  See, most of Seattle is pretty yuppy, though still quite progressive in many respects.  Fremont had the alt-vibe that we love about Portland.  Take, for instance, this statue of Vladimir Lenin:

 I'm not going to give you a history lesson, but he is a Russian communist/Marxist politician from the early 1900's.  This statue is the largest statue of Lenin in America, obviously, so it was a must see.

We also headed over to the Troll statue.  I knew what to expect after googling it previously, but it was even freakier in person....

 Yikes.

One last stop at Gasworks Park for a view of the city before we headed to the train station.

 Seattle is vast.  Huge.  Ginormous.  Extremely large.

I was a little taken aback by its size, perhaps because it is always compared to Portland (for reasons completely unrelated to size).  I knew it was bigger, but WOW is it ever!

The Space Needle?  Not as impressive in person.

Proof that we were there :)

(Sorry for the blurry photos!  Dusk + mist + point and shoot doesn't lead to very good photos.)

We made it to the train on time and settled in for a nice dinner.

Owen noshed on some carrot sticks as an apertif:

 While we started digging into our Vietnamese food.

Owen refused to sleep, so he sat with Kraig while I read the book that would turn us vegan.

All in all, a great trip!  We can't wait to host Wanda and Dan here in Portland, but we had such a great time on their home turf.  Hooray for old friends in new cities!