Seattle, WA

We flew out of LV early this morning or at least early for us, we were up by 6:30 and in the cab an hour later. We arrived at the airport early enough to enjoy our "We're on vacation" ceremony, which consists of a Bloody Mary while waiting for the plane. I made Scott take about 8 pictures of our first drink of the trip. By picture number 5 he is more than annoyed with me and asks, "why can't we just enjoy our beverages?" "Because this will be the first picture of the scrapbook and I want it to look good." I reply. He is done with me and my shenanigans, he downs his bloody and the adventure begins.
We have a layover in Salt Lake City, we deboard and are starving. We debate how long we have and he tells me we have 45 minutes before the next plane. I tell him no way they would give us less than an hour to catch the next flight. He looks at his phone and agrees with me, "your right we have an hour and 45 minutes." Excellent we are off in search of lunch. We travel about 2 miles before we arrive at the food court. The only options are Burger King and Pizza Hut. Yum, here we are so excited about all the wonderful food we are going to enjoy while on vacation and this will be our first meal. We each order a value meal and sit down to enjoy. For some reason about half way through my burger I ask, "What time is it here? I thought Utah was in a different time zone than Vegas?" Scott continues eating and slowly pulls out his phone, "No, its the same time zone unless my phone had yet to update when I looked at it earlier." The next few moments were in slow motion....Noooooooooooo.......Our relaxing lunch was over, we made it back to the plane as they were boarding. Thank goodness, being stuck in Utah would have put a large damper on our beverage consumption for the trip.

We arrive in Seattle, grab our bags and the keys to the rental car. On our way out we agree to pay upfront for a full tank of gas and we can return it on empty. We believe this will work out in our favor since gas in Portland is a more expensive. The second we see the car we start laughing, it's the only hybrid in the whole lot of hundreds of cars. I wonder if they do that on purpose??? But in truth I am excited it's a really nice car, which is surprising since we picked the "economy model." We load up, plug the GPS in and are ready to go. Scott turns the key, everything lights up, the radio starts, the a/c is blowing full blast but the car didn't turn over. He tries a couple more times. I refuse to accept the car is already broken, it appears to be brand new. We look everywhere for a secret button to push to start the car. We find nothing. I get out of the car and go to the desk to inform them of the broken car. They find me the maintenance guy, him and I return to the car. He jumps in and completes the same sequence of events that we just finished. He is also beyond confused, it appears that everything is fine except for the fact you don't hear the car running. (Those of you have driven a hybrid are now laughing.) He gets out of the car and looks at it with great confusion and his face lights up. Oh you forgot to tell me it was a hybrid, the car is running, the engine will kick on once you are going 45 mph. See I told you there was only one hybrid in the lot.

We are staying at the Ace Hotel for the next couple of nights. Its a cute hotel and right up my alley. It is very European, with two different room options; in-suit bathrooms and community bathrooms. Its an old building with great character and the rooms are very streamline modern with exposed brick. The bathroom sink is stainless steal industrial style straight out of an airplane. There is no elevator, stairs only. Downstairs is the breakfast area, which is served until 12n (told you this was my kind of place.) The lobby consists of a registration desk and a huge communal table where you can play any of the hotels assorted board games.Love it!

Pike's market is amazing. I took so many pictures of the food and flowers. We can't wait to go back tomorrow to explore it further. We were only about 15 minutes in today before we found a store full of shiny meat, cheese and wine. My knees went weak, we had made it to heaven, it was beautiful. We were done for, it was time for a picnic. We ordered truffled Gouda and Gruyere cheese, salami from Salumi and 1/2 bottle Cote du Rhone. We pulled up some grass behind the market right along the bay to enjoy our picnic. While we were there we enjoyed some great people watching. We sat and relaxed for awhile, it was nice. We went to leave and decided to give our leftovers to one of the bums vs. throwing it away. Just as I was thinking we had done our good deed for the day Scott asks me what I thought the bum would think about the truffled cheese?

We went to Steelhead restaurant tonight which is just outside of the market. It was a recommendation of a friend and it turned out to be a great one. We started out by sharing the clam chowder and it was "life changing." Scott didn't quit understand how it was life changing until I explained that we obviously were moving to Seattle to be close to such perfection. The rest of the meal was also very good, I had Oregon Black Cod and Scott had Catfish tacos. I also ordered a fun cocktail which consisted of Pear vodka, elderberry liqueur, Violet liqueur and citrus juice.