We’re usually Southwest kind of flyers but in this case Alaska was just so much cheaper. Assigned seating too, which can be a good thing or a bad thing. 24 hours prior to our flight like every other airline you can check in, with Alaska though since you have those fancy assigned seats you can also change them if you want. You can even upgrade to First Class!! HOOOO RAYYYY!! Only a $50.00 charge per seat? Awesome. We obviously wanted to be ballers and fly super fancy for our honeymoon. Why not right, we just got some extra cash from the wedding, might as well spend some of it. Promptly 24 hours prior I logged into the site, popped in that confirmation code and bam! Seat changes were available. Oh wait just a second though, NO FIRST CLASS!! Talk about a buzz kill. I texted the bad news to Wesley that he wouldn’t get to have “ballet status and twizzlers”. (For reference please see image of a text conversation The Hubs and I had last weekend when he was flying for work)
Figured we’d just try our luck when we got to the airport. Plus side for Alaska number 1, those people never have anyone in their lines, unlike Southwest who just have people wrapping around those line markers like crazy people. We walked right up to the counter (no we don’t want to check our bags), we want FIRST CLASS lady!! Why yes Mrs. Frederic I do have a seat available. You could only imagine the look on my face, BALLET STATUS here we go. Apparently in my excitement though I misheard A SEAT, like one seat. Buzz kill number two. Well I mean I could have been a selfish biatch and just taken it and made Mr. Frederic sit coach, but I didn’t. I’m a good wife. So through security we go, unable to use that fancy line dedicated to the First Class peeps. Wonder what that’s actually like? To skip right to the front of the line? Gotta be like when you buy the fast passes at Magic Mountain I assume. I mean you know because it takes all of five minutes to get through security at John Wayne.
To the gate we went. Ok I totally went to the customer service counter one last time in the hopes that someone decided they wanted to oversleep and they weren’t going to make it to their first class seat and there would be two available now. Hells no, none, notta, go past go and do not collect $200.00, maybe we just weren’t meant to be ballet status. Boarding begins and they call First Class, Alaska Elite or whatever their fancy club was, families, people who need extra time and rows 5 and 6. Sweet ok, get all these people on there and let me just get on the plane. Oh no, they skip right over row 7 and go straight to the back of the plane. Literally end up being the last group called. STUPID. You know why I like Southwest, because I’m an OCD biatch and I pay that stupid extra $12.00 fee to get “early boarding” and I’m always A Group! Who cares that you have to sit on the plane like 20 mins longer, I just wanna be on the plane. Anyways, we get to the counter I flash my ticket then the lady is like umm “ma’am please check your bag to make sure it’s going to fit in carry on”. I’m like you’re kidding right, fine I’ll stick it in your stupid checker, of course it fits. Then she notices I have my purse and my camera bag. Cue stupid lady, “umm ma’am you’re only allowed one extra bag, would you like to check your carry on?” NO Lady, if I wanted to check it I would have checked it when I got to the airport. Do you think I wanna wait an hour in Seattle waiting for baggage claim? So I put my camera bag inside my massive purse and say look at that now I only have one extra bag. Pretty sure that lady hated me, but whatever, I just wanted to get on the plane.
Ok enough with silly airport stories.
We got into Seattle early actually. The plan was to head on over to the SoundTransit station where we’d be taking the Link Light Rail from the airport into downtown Seattle. Yep, first time on public transportation. Why pay a smelly taxi cab driver $40.00 when you can pay $5.50 for the both of us on public transportation. Yeah we had to stand the whole way, but who cares, I was just sitting on a completely uncomfortable airplane seat for the last 2 and a half hours. It’s all good. Surprisingly public transportation wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be. The Link Light Rail is pretty rad. We'd be hitting that up on Monday to get back to the airport. Made it into downtown and found our way to the hotel.
W Hotel in Seattle was great. They allowed us to check in super early at 12PM. They actually had a room ready for us. Oh and would you look at that they even said we were the VIP guests of the day! And that we would get a surprise sent up to us. (Hey spoiler alert... they lied, we didn’t get no surprise but whatever we were the VIP’s and we pretended that it felt like “ballet status”. We had the “Spectacular King Room” on the top floor (26 is the top floor by the way!) We got into the elevator and no joke the floor mat said good afternoon. And guess what when we got back later that night, it said good evening. And guess what, in the morning, it says good morning. Pretty neat, just saying. The room way great though, there were huge windows that overlooked the city and under the windows was a super long built in couch with some pretty comfy pillows. We took a nap there later. Overall though to be honest it was a pretty awesome hotel room.
We pretty much ventured right back out to the city, we were starving. We decided to head straight down to the Pike’s Place Market area. It’s by far my favorite place in Seattle. Ok even though were were starving I had to find the gum wall. I actually had never seen it before. Yes, there is a famous attraction in Seattle and it is walls upon walls of people who literally take the gum from their mouth and plaster it to a wall. It’ actually probably one of the grossest things ever, but for some reason it’s so cool. Minus the fact that it was actually a really warm day so that gum was a little stickier than usual and there were even a few bees that thought the wall was a cool place to hang out as well. Moving on though we actually did get some food. We ended up finding this French place called Maximilien. No joke the servers were super French, they would speak to us in English with their super rad accents and then go tell a colleague something in some wicked good French! The food was fantastic! Wesley got a cup of Tomato Soup to start and we also grabbed the fruit and cheese platter with their half loaf of baguette. They totally had these fancy cheeses which I couldn’t even pronounce again or spell if I tried. The best was these little champange grapes. Cutest little things you’ve ever seen. Main part of lunch was the catch of the day for Wesley which was the Ahi Tuna, and I had the Brie Burger. Holy smokes was that thing good. Massive, and way too much to eat but damn delicious. We spent more on that lunch than we did on most dinners we’ve done before. Whatever, we’re on our honeymoon, you’re not supposed to care about things like that.
After that it was time to show Wesley what the market is all about. We walked in and bam they were throwing fish! It’s the best thing to watch. They do these chants, then whip those fish about a good 15 feet to each other. Pretty rad skills if you ask me. I don’t think Wesley liked it as much as I did. To each his own haha. Walking around the market is so much fun though. Even if you’re not going to spend a dime it’s just cool to see all the stuff and even people watch if you’re into that. Believe me, there are some wackos if you keep an eye out. For me though I was on a mission. Every time I’ve been to Seattle and gone to the market I made it a point to get the Chukar Cherries. These things are like crack. I could eat a whole bag in a sitting if I really wanted to. They are basically chocolate covered cherries. Not like the ones Mamma Dukes makes (with the creamy sweet filling), just a basic dried-ish cherry covered in flavored chocolates. Hot damn they are good. They had some almonds too, might as well grab those while you’re at it. They’re fantastic too. 4 bags and $35.00 later mission accomplished! Worth it. After that it’s much more of the same in the market. Flowers are far as you can see. Bouquets literally for $5.00 a piece. I’m telling you for men that live in Seattle and have easy access to the market, if they aren’t going there once a week and throwing down a five spot for their wife or girlfriend there is something wrong. They are some of the most gorgeous flowers I’ve seen, (every time) and they are so CHEAP! That’s just my little message to the men of Seattle. Just saying.
We got down there about 6:45 so we decided to kill a couple mins and walked into this store that was right next to the restaurant. It was gross, well maybe not gross but it had the weirdest smell about it and it was just a hot mess of all kinds of odds and ends weirdness. They did however have a vampire killing kit right by the front door. You know just incase a vampire was to come around. Decided we would just go next door and get checked in for our reservation. Only had a to wait a few minutes and we were seated, they even made sure to fulfill my request for a table with a view. We had a view of the water and next to us the Seattle Fire Department boats. Kind of neat and of course I snapped a picture and immediately sent it to Brother Mark. I always send him cool Fire Department stuff when I see it. So my mission for this dinner was clam chowder. I honestly didn’t care about much else. The best thing in Seattle though, that damn clam chowder, I could eat it everyday if I lived there. When the waiter came up to get our drink and appy order with no hesitation I just was like “THE CHOWDA”, to which he responded, “I like it”. Heck yeah he does, he knows what’s up with that chowda. Wesley decided to get the Chowder sampler, seafood chowder, New England (that’s the white), and the Manhattan (that’s the red). He ended up liking the red best. He doesn’t know what’s good for him though. That white is where it’s at. Moving on though, for dinner we took our waiter Eric’s advice. I went with the Alaskan Halibut (covered in basil, fine onions, and prosciutto, and a side of beans and purple potatoes. Wesley got the Salmon and mini scallop plate with a veggie mix. I don’t know about his meal, (salmon and scallops are gross) but that Halibut I got was the best piece of fish I’ve ever had.....EVER. Literally that stuff melted in my mouth and the topping, oh snap. Seriously it was stupid good! When Eric came back to check on us I think he was skeptical because I was really just excited about the chowda so when I told him that the halibut was stupid good he said he wasn’t going to paraphrase when he told the chef. I ended up skipping on the potatoes, they just looked dry, and honestly I didn’t want to ruin my tastebuds. They were having a happy dance marathon that night. Luckily for me without those potatoes my tummy was in a really good place to actually be able to get dessert with dinner. Usually we gorge ourselves and just don’t have room. Thank goodness we saved room because the dessert trio with the Apple Crisp, Creme Brulee and Chocolate Mousse was also stupid good. I have to say my fav was probably the Creme Brulee though, you just can’t go wrong there.
By far one of the best dinners we’ve ever had. Service was amazing. We had mentioned we were on our honeymoon and he ended up giving us the chowda for FREE and he comped our dessert too! Eric gets five stars from us. I really hope he had a great long weekend at the Seattle music festival he was going to. Bummed he wasn’t going to be there Monday though, because we were totally going back there for lunch. He told me I can get a halibut BLT! Um yea, I’ll be back for that and some more of your chowda. Thanks! Oh and thanks to our friend Ricky T (who used to live in Seattle) for making the awesome recommendation. WORTH IT!
During dinner we had seen a bunch of ferries going back and forth. Ricky did mention that we should try and do an evening ride but by the time our taste buds got done doing their happy dance we thought it was too late, we didn’t see another ferry and didn’t want to risk going and not having it come back, so we saved ourself the walk and instead decided to take a walk up the street to the Seattle Big Wheel. Now if you know me you know I’m not exactly great with heights. But I decided that YOLO, you know, you only live once. We bought our tickets, stood in a bit of a line, (it was getting damn chilly by this point) and waited for our turn. There were two girls in front of us talking about taking some really random trips, I’m still not sure based off of my eavesdropping on their conversations what kind of job or program they were in that they got to travel to the places they did, none the less the funnier part was that they were snap chatting. Taking redonkulous selfies. It really was pretty funny, then I had to obviously tell the story about the time I signed up for snap chat because my niece had it and she would send me all kinds of crazy faces. Ok moving on, we got on that Seattle Big Wheel and it was awesome. You go three time around and if you feel like you can’t make it they point out the big emergency button just incase you need to make an emergency stop. HOOO RAYYY I didn’t push the button! Success!
After that we ended up heading back to the hotel, it was already about 10PM and we were going to need to get up semi early to hit up the train station so we could make our way to Vancouver. That’s it for Day 1 though, WOWZA that was a lot of information I just puked up there for you. Hope you enjoyed day 1 as much as we did!
Until Day 2.
M-EFF
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