I love Seattle!

We just took a very quick trip to Seattle. We had never been there before and it is only a 3 1/2 hour drive from where we live now, so we decided to just take off. It was amazing. Seattle really is a beautiful city. I can see why so many people love it there. There is so much to do and see and everyone is so active there. I have never seen so many people out running, biking, hiking, sailing, etc. We tried to do and see what we could, but you can only do so much with a 6 month old and a 5 year old with autism.

Marty and I are really into food. We plan a lot of our trips around where we would like to eat. I usually look up the best places on citysearch.com and we try to squeeze those places into our vacation plans. Unfortunately this time we kind of had some bad luck with some places being closed when we wanted to go, or we just couldn't find them. We really did find a gem, however, with the Salmon Bay Cafe. If anyone ever goes to Seattle, I would highly recommend this place for breakfast. The omelets were absolutely amazing, and they could easily be split between two people. The pictures really don't do the omelet justice. I didn't take a picture of mine, but it was stuffed with avocadoes, big thick pieces of bacon, cheese, and sour cream. It was a great little diner, and it should be on "Diners, Drive-ins, and Dives" on the Food Network (if you watch this show, you know what I am talking about).

After our breakfast, we ended up somewhere around the University District. This was such a neat part of town. I would have liked to spend a lot more time there. There were a lot of neat trendy little stores and so many different places to eat.

We then went to a park called Golden Gate park. It was pretty cold by the time we got over there. It wasn't the nicest day, but Vanessa thought it was really neat. She enjoyed looking for crabs and shells and Evan just enjoyed looking at the water (of course he really just wanted to jump in it.)

After that we went to another park by the University of Washington that had a great view of downtown Seattle. We just hung out there long enough to get some pictures. By the time we left, Ben was not feeling very happy anymore.

While we were there, I was also able to meet up with one of my friends from high school who now lives in the area. It was fun seeing her again and her family. We had a good time. Her little boy(who is almost 2), really took a liking to Vanessa. He insisted on holding her hand, while we walked through a mall. It was really cute.

On our last day, we finally made it downtown to check out Pike Place Market. What an amazing place! There were all kinds of fresh fruit and seafood stands. In fact, there were all kinds of food and non-food stands. I could have shopped there for hours, but instead had to walk quickly through the isles, admiring from afar. There were also all kinds of neat little places to grab a bite to eat. We enjoyed some fresh made donuts (that were really really good and a big hit with Vanessa and Evan) and some pastries at a Russian bakery. If you ever go to Seattle, you have to check this place out.

In the end, we were definitely ready to get home. Traveling with the kids, can be a bit trying at times, but we have to get out some time. We didn't really do anything very "flashy", but it was fun just being able to visit a part of the country we have never seen before.

Check out our pictures, if you want to see a few of the places we visited.