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Honeymoon: Day Three 3 Girls Bakery was so good that I had to go back a second time. Greg had a meat pie or something from this Russian place, but I had a chocolate croissant (yesterday I’d had the banana bread) and it was so good. Woo honeymoon diet! After breakfast we caught the monorail from Westlake Center again and this time ended up at the Experience Music Project. Damn, it’s expensive - $19.95 a person! The place isn’t all that huge either, but they use so much technology you can see why it costs so much. They give everyone this complicated (and freaking heavy) interactive headphone/pack thing to carry around so that you can listen to different stuff about the museum. After the first exhibit, though, I gave mine back – my shoulder was killing me from carrying it. I carried it for the most important part, though – an exhibit they had with different rock memorabilia/costume pieces, and you could listen to people (sometimes the artists themselves) talking about what it meant/why it was chosen etc. That was neat. They also had a place upstairs where you could enter a soundproof booth and “jam” – you could sing, or play an instrument. That was pretty cool, even if they only had three songs – Smells Like Teen Spirit, I Will Remember You, and something by Stevie Wonder (I think). And there was another exhibit that traced rock to punk, and a “ride” based around James Brown. And a movie room. Oh, and this thing where you could go in and pretend to be a rock star – you “play” instruments along with some music and they project an audience and they take your picture (which you can buy if you want) and then print out tickets at the end for your “band” and “performance.” So Greg wanted to and I love him so I did it too, and our band was called No Fly Zone and the song we chose (out of three) was Twist and Shout. Greg sang and played guitar and I sort of banged on the drums and wore a boa. We didn’t buy the picture and I’ll be damned if I can find the tickets right now or I’d scan one for you to see.
We walked around Seattle Center a bit and rode the totally lame log flume (didn’t even get wet) and then played that horse race game where you roll balls into different holes to make your “horse run” and I won myself a stuffed dog. Back at Westlake Center we ate lunch (a gyro for me and Thai for Greg) and then we bought some beautiful glass coasters at a shop called Fireworks and then it was back to the hotel for a loooooong nap. Longer than we intended, but we’d been walking our butts off for two and a half days. Greg slept more than I did; I first read a YA novel from the 50’s and then slept a little. Dinner, we’d decided, would be at the Belltown Pub. We were on our way there (on foot, of course) when we turned down a street we hadn’t taken before (5th Avenue) and passed a different restaurant. We read the menu, thought hey this sounds pretty good, and decided to be spontaneous. Thank goodness, because it ended up being the second best meal of the trip (you’ll hear about the best when I get to Vancouver). The restaurant is called the icon Grill (go look at their website - they have panoramic views of the place and menus and stuff), and it was fabulous. It’s huge and sort of circular, with a raised platform in the middle that has seating on it as well as seating all around the edges and some upstairs. There’s glass art everywhere (note the thing behind Greg’s head here:)
There were nets hanging from the ceiling with tons of those big glass ball-things hanging in them. That part sort of looked like Willy Wonka’s Chocolate Room. And there were a billion different lampshades, and different colors that shouldn’t have worked together but did. The way they had it lit made it feel very warm and welcoming.
The service was amazing, absolutely friendly and amazing. I had a drink called a Pink Elephant, and damned if I can remember what was in it but it was good. The waitress made some suggestions and brought us really good sourdough bread with three different kinds of butters – regular, pesto, and roasted pepper. We ordered two fish entrees to share – potato crusted halibut (baked inside thin potato slices) and parmesan crusted sole, and she offered to have them split in twos for us. So a guy brings two plates and sets them down, and Greg and I think Oh, they forgot to split them, but that’s okay until he says I’ll be right back with the sole and we realize how freaking huge the portions are. We liked the sole the best but both were fantastic. Every time the waitress came back (not too often, just the right amount of time between visits) we chatted a little more and she asked where we were from and why we were there and we filled her in and she asked us what we’d done and stuff. Just a really nice person. And then she came back in a little while and said she’d told her manager it was our honeymoon, and they were bringing us their signature sundae in celebration. (Ah, those honeymoon perks, which you’ll hear more about tomorrow!) So the signature sundae (which I think I took a picture of with the disposable, so once we get those pics back I’ll add to this entry) was huge – five or so scoops of ice cream in a giant bowl made out of a thin buttery vanilla wafer type cookie, with another cookie rolled into a cone and stuck in the middle. When the waitress delivered it, she lifted up the cone – and hot fudgy goodness poured out, all over the ice cream. Then she offered up a collection of toppings to pick from. It was pretty cool. She took our picture for us, we left a huge tip, and raved about her and the food to the person behind the hostess station on the way out. If you’re in Seattle, we cannot recommend this place highly enough. One thing our waitress told us was that the restaurant/bar on top of our hotel is known across the city (we had no idea), so we went up and listened to the piano player and I had a cosmopolitan and life was good. A lovely ending to our last night in Seattle! |
