much-to-celebrate-monday: Seattle style

Oh. My. Word. This week's celebration is SO BIG that I started celebrating, Seattle-style, last Friday at approximately 11am PST...which lasted welllll in to MONDAY (when I started writing this post!)... and I don't plan on stopping the celebration any time in the foreseen future {Read: Jimmy Buffett concert Saturday with Kara & Kelley!!}...

I'm celebrating that the instant I stepped foot on University of Washington's AMAZING historic campus I knew it would be where I would be going to school this Fall Summer!! They are allowing me to start in June... and finish next August! =) I'm going to be a Husky! {Cue purple & gold confetti shower!}



I'm celebrating that Carly knew exactly what I would want to do to celebrate this incredible {bright, glittery, yellow, cobblestone} road I'm heading down: beer & pizza & root beer floats!  {Cue smiling heart.}


After a little afternoon Space Needle Site-seeing, we headed to Nordstrom to pick up the "essential wardrobe piece" of a Seattleite: HUNTER RAIN BOOTS! {Cue splashing in puddles!}

It was our last night in the Emerald City so we went all out with a celebratory bottle of bubbly {Sparkling Reisling, that is!} & a lovely dinner at the schmancy Wild Ginger {yumm! singing fish satay!}

... before heading over to The Crocodile {a bar where grunge originated} to listen to a Weezer cover band whose name was actually Teezer but a misprint on the flyer read Tweezer, which is just hilarious. {Cue sticking out like a sore thumb in a crowd of Kurt Cobain wannabes... but secretly loving every minute of it.}

I sadly departed at midnight Friday night back to Florida but I am celebrating in the sunshine that I will be back in the very near future!! =) {Cue crackin' open books, replacing balanced meals with tubes of cookie dough, pulling all-nighters studying, consuming incessant amounts of caffeine & merrily, kissing my social life good-bye until next summer!}

Yahooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo!

Sleepless in Seattle.

Seattle: Day 2

The weather was cold & dreary the next morning but we embraced the rain, donned our Wellies and little, yellow raincoats, & set out in search of a hot lunch!

After much success finding The Olsen Twins Japonessa! our first night in Seattle, we tried our luck again using the urbanspoon app and found a delicious "off-the-map" place on Post Alley to eat a delectable bread bowl of clam chowder!

After lunch, we explored the public market where we happened upon the cutest little doughnut shop, Daily Dozen, run by total hipsters.

We decided to take our assortment of mini doughnuts to the original Starbucks just down the cobblestone street!

The perfect pairing! We listened to the street performers and took in all the different people while we warmed up!

After our afternoon in the market, we headed up to Capitol Hill to eat, drink and meet Murray, the country's best bartender! More pix to follow! =)

market price{less}.

The Pike Place Market was seven blocks down from our swanky hotel & Carly & I spent A LOT of time perusing the aisles looking at all the lovely things vendors had for sale; trying on hats, taste-testing orange honey flavoured hazelnuts and chocolate spaghetti. A unique energy, partially filled with tourists snapping cameras next to Rachel the brass Pig but equally filled with locals buying items they could cross off their grocery list... it was this unexpected dimension of mingling amongst the locals that made our aimless wandering through the market priceless.

The bouquets of flowers were breathtaking. We ooo'd and awe'd over the beauty & massive size of all the pretty tulips...

There was teyberry jam and raspberry honey, aplenty.

Crimini + shimeji shrooms, galore. Fiddleheads? They've got 20!

But the seafood! It was insane. Gigantic scampis & humongo crabs! It was all so fresh! And you can't forget the adorable men and their rubbers flying fish...

gum.drop

olsen-twin-awesome

I promise i'm alive. I worked a cajillion hours days and nights and evenings and sometimes for sixteen hours at a time the last five days and could hardly remember what day it was when I woke up... sometimes at 2am; sometimes at 4 in the afternoon... but never at a normal time where I felt coherent enough to blog. Anyways... I arrived safely in Forks Seattle yesterday evening. Carly & I reunited at the airport and hailed a taxi to our fabu hotel! We shook her phone (using the urbanspoon app) to find a sushi restaurant near us. Only seven blocks away, we randomly ate amazing sushi with truffle oil at Japonessa!

When we arrived, we were a little confused as to why the hostess was like "Well, I have these 2 tables available down here but it can be freezing down here so if you want to sit at that lone table in the middle of the dining room up there!!!, I'll seat you up there." Flor-nia girls, we naturally opted for the warmer table but I didn't expect to immediately start sweating before we even sat down when Carly & I simultaneously realized that the OLSEN TWINS (Read: Our Childhood Idols!!) were sitting at the table 3 feet away from us!!

I pretty much spent the first hour of dinner downing Asahi to calm my nerves and eavesdrop on their "uber normal" conversation...

Needless-to-say, this vacation {after less than 12 hours} is already olsen-twin-awesome! =) & I will be spending the rest of the trip reciting It Takes Two trying not to let my Mary-Kate & Ashley siting influence my grad school selection. T-48 hours til I have made a commitment...

I hope that when I arrive HERE tomorrow morning it will be that can't-eat, can't-sleep, reach-for-the-stars, over-the-fence, world series kinda stuff... and the decision will already be made for me! =)