Soaking up Seattle

We had the best time on our last minute excursion to Seattle and I really got to break in my new camera. The sights there are just breathtaking, with scenery that we just do not have down South. I’m an adventuress at heart and love to travel around to new places. I have been Seattle once before, but it’s been 15 years. This time, it was fun to see Mt. Rainier up close and personal and to visit some places I didn’t see the first time.

I hope you enjoy LOTS of pics, because I took a ton of them to capture the beauty of Seattle.  We visited Mt. Rainier the first day, Bainbridge Island the 2nd, and the 3rd full day, we took a ferry over to the San Juan Islands and did a whale watch tour.  Fun, fun, fun!!  So, stay tuned for all of that.  Friday was our last day there and we ended up driving South of Seattle to see what was down there, hoping for some rustic ocean views, but we gave up before we made it to the ocean and our drive was anything but beautiful on the way down.  On the way back, we ended up in a major traffic jam, so that last day was a bust. But, we had 3 full days of great sight-seeing, so no worries. 🙂

As I mentioned, we stayed at The Edgewater hotel. It looked to me like a ship docked on the water and we got to upgrade to a water view, so it was just like being on a cruise ship. Gorgeous views and the sounds of the seagulls greeted us when we opened those windows.  I took pics with both of my cameras and you can probably tell the ones I took with the new Canon DSLR.  I’m really happy with the photos this camera is taking.

We were somewhere in the middle of that row of windows on the 3rd floor.

The architecture of the hotel was really interesting.  There’s such a lodge feel out in the Pacific Northwest and this hotel embraced it.

Outside was this huge rock walled fireplace at the entrance, which was very welcoming. You can imagine with all the rain they get, a fireplace is a nice thing to have around.

The lobby looks out over the water and was really pretty.

This antler chandelier was quite stunning.  Notice the hanging fish, of course that is the norm in Seattle.

As are the bears.  🙂

From the rustic bed.

To the rustic wood TV cabinet, it was like being in a treehouse.

Check out the sliding doors looking into the bathroom with the white clawfoot tub.  Reminded me of the Old West.

Stone floors and shower too.

I did take a soak in the tub one night after a day of bike riding.

And we even had our own little fireplace (which we didn’t use).  The views out that window are just outstanding.

So this was our view from the huge window, nothing but water and the harbor down the way, as well as the islands out from Seattle.  We also went over to Bainbridge Island one day, which I’ll tell you about too.   We’ll get back to this window later in the post.  We really didn’t need to go out at night after our busy days of excursions, so we were grateful for the views out the window, as you will see in a minute.

First stop, Pike Place Market.  If you’ve ever been to Seattle, no doubt you have been to Pike Place, the world-famous market of fresh fish, fruits and veggies, and flowers.  Oh, the flowers!  The Pacific Northwest grows some of the most gorgeous flowers you have ever laid eyes on and that’s one of the things I love about it.  Lush, beautiful, gorgeous gardens everywhere.  With all that rain, that’s one of the bonuses.  🙂  The Market has been around for a very long time and I can see that it would be a great place to get all the fresh produce and fish that you can imagine.

We had a lot of fun strolling through one morning and stopped by one of the bakeries for some fabulous pastries and cookies.   We ate at this restaurant our first night in.

Beautiful produce!

Dungeness crabs are huge and I had one of these one night for dinner.  I decided that I’m not so good at cracking claws, so next time I’ll just stick with crabcakes.

We did get some good crabcakes at the Athenian Restaurant.

Seafood lovers paradise.  And I’m a huge seafood lover myself.

Oh, and the cherries.  Rainier cherries are fantastic and plentiful here at the market.  We got some to go.

How could you pass these fresh berries and fruits by?

The flowers are just amazing.  So many flower vendors with the most lush and beautiful flowers you have ever seen.  And cheap too!  I’d be all over these flowers for many occasions if I had this nearby.  They grow the most outstanding peonies I’ve ever seen.

Tons of lilies about to burst forth.

More peonies.

I got some great shots of the city from our ferry ride to Bainbridge, so I’ll show you those too.  It really is a pretty city on the water with the most stunning views of those snow-capped mountains behind.  Wait til I show you more of the Mr. Rainier pics.  Gorgeous and we couldn’t have had a better day for that. I’ve heard that sometimes the clouds are SO bad that you can be right in front of the mountain and never see it.  Now, that would have been sad!  We were SO blessed to see all this beauty and have great weather.

You can see the space needle in this pic, but we didn’t go up on it.

Sailboats are all over the place. I think nothing is prettier on the water than a sailboat floating by.

And here’s a view of  our hotel, The Edgewater, from our ferry ride.  You can see the large red E there to the left in the pic and it’s the gray building.

Another pretty sailboat.

So, as I mentioned we were pretty pooped every evening when we got in from sight-seeing all day and we’re not nightowls anyway.  We would grab a bite to eat and come back to the hotel and watch these view from our window.

The sun doesn’t set until 9:00 out there, so we had plenty of time to watch the boats come in and out of the harbor.  And I was lucky enough to catch some pretty sunsets too.

Now this is the kind of night life that appeals to me. 🙂

Our last night, we watched this huge freighter come in and dock.

This huge sailboat came by right before sunset too? What’s not to love about this view?
You can see we had a great time and that’s only about 1/3 of the pics I took. Hope you enjoy them all and don’t get bored, but it was so much fun I just have to share them with y’all.

Added to Darcy’s Sweet Shot Tuesday.