Day 17: Pike Place Market, Bainbridge Island, and Fremont - July 1

Our first real day of exploring Seattle was a ton of fun!  There is so much to do and see in this city (and so many great suggestions from others) that it feels challenging to plan our itinerary…but a challenge I am up for.  I knew Pike Place Market was a for sure so I just decided to start there with breakfast at Lowell’s complete with window seating with great views out across the water.   We spent a couple of hours walking the Market, sampling along the way, and spent some time talking to the fishmongers at the Pike Place Fish Market and watching the fish fly.  It is one of my only memories from my last time in Seattle over 20 years ago.   We went by the first Starbucks and, especially because we don’t drink coffee, did not wait in the line to get in.  (There are very few lines I would wait in I guess if I wasn’t willing to wait for Salt & Straw.)

Fishmonger Justin - a quick buddy

From the Market, we walked over to the Ferry Building to catch the boat to Bainbridge Island for lunch.  The place that Petra recommended wasn’t even on the detailed map of restaurants on the island, but she has never steered us wrong before so we tracked down the Madison Diner, a traditional diner in a 1948 stainless steel dining car.  Petra’s specific recommendation was for a peppermint milkshake.  None of us were particularly hungry and couldn’t possibly order lunch and dessert, so for the first time in my life that I remember I allowed myself to just have the milkshake for lunch!  I suggested sharing, but Rachel insisted she needed her own shake (and had to try the cornmeal pancake and a bowl of granola).  She took maybe two sips of the milkshake and was totally full.  I had finished mine, hers still looked untouched.  I couldn’t stand the thought of just wasting that beautiful and delicious milkshake so I walked it over to another table and offered it to two young women.  No doubt they found it very strange, but were wise enough to see it was an offer too good to pass up. 

We meandered back down the main street poking into art galleries, clothing boutiques, and book stores, before coming to the Bainbridge Art Museum dedicated to artists from the surrounding area.  We spent most of our time looking at the fanciful work of children’s book illustrator Pierr Morgan.  The exhibit, called Imagine, included a hands-on art activity where you first made a squiggle and then used your imagination to create the rest of a drawing.  The girls came up with very creative ideas…all I saw in my yellow squiggle was a piece of spaghetti.

We ferried back to Seattle and the views on the water were magnificent.  It was such a beautiful, clear day you could see all of Seattle totally dwarfed by Mt. Rainier rising seemingly out of nowhere, like it just floats above the land.  The perspective was crazy, even with it 100 miles away it is crystal clear that when that mountain erupts again (hopefully not for a very, very long time), Seattle is in huge trouble.  I imagine most of the year you can’t really see the mountain from Seattle – I’m so glad we’ve had such great views!

When we disembarked back in Seattle, the semi-final match between Japan and England was already underway.  We had plans to meet up with Dave Barth (from our Caltech days) and family for dinner in Fremont (an area that had been recommended to me by camper Mina and conveniently where Dave works), so he suggested a place close to our dinner locale that we could catch the second half of the game. What a heart-breaking way for any game to end!  We weren’t particularly invested in the result but no game should ever end that way. 


We walked around the corner to meet Dave, his lovely wife Christine and their adorable daughter Serena at Revel for dinner.  It was so nice to catch up, get a glimpse of their current life, and hear lots more suggestions to try to work into our next couple of days in Seattle.  I can tell we are going to need a return visit!   After dinner they showed us around the Fremont area – a funky, artsy neighborhood with large outdoor art installations.  We saw dinosaur topiaries, cold-war era rockets, Saturn, a communist leader, the troll under the bridge, and the center of the universe! It was nice to have locals show us around and great to spend more time wandering and chatting.

Dave works for Google in Seattle, so comes to Mountain View with some frequency…and there are quite a few other “kids” from Caltech working in the Bay Area – I’m picturing a mini-reunion at our house!