We are at home in Seattle... well, sort of. Lisa headed west from CT for her first day of work on 16 July. I began my cross-country drive after dropping her off at the airport and after a brief swing through NJ for some final goodbyes. After two days, I hooked up with Roadtripper (RT) in Minneapolis. For a detailed account of the journey, click here to check out RT's blog (Days 102-108). After a trip back to CT to oversee the moving process, I joined Lisa in our temporary home on 1st Ave West in the serviceable Metro on First apartment building.
Our temporary home is located--for those of you ambitious enough to look at a map--in the Queen Anne section of Seattle, which is adjacent to the Downtown/Belltown city center. The apartment building is located three blocks from the Seattle Center, which is a main tourist area that houses the Space Needle. So basically our morning goes like this: Wake up, walk outside, look up at Space Needle. Also right here is the Key Arena where the Sonics (NBA team) play, but maybe not for long as there is a battle to take the team to Oklahoma City. I don't really care if they move the Sonics, but it would be nice if they build the new arena they're requesting and then bring in a pro hockey team. I'm not excited to drive three hours to Vancouver to get my hockey fix.
While the apartment itself is nothing special--other than it being a one-bedroom for the two of us, one dog and two cats--the location is great. From our balcony on the sixth floor, we have a great view of Puget Sound, which is a few blocks walk down the hill. In the background of the photos is the Olympic mountain range. That's one of the cool things about Seattle. It's flanked by the Olympics to the west, the Cascades to the east, and Mount Rainier looms large to the South. That means mountain views in most directions. You can check out the Olympics and Puget Sound in the view from our balcony to the right. This also has led Lisa to decide that we bought the wrong home. When we were looking, we had a few criteria:- Proximity to the city center and Lisa's job
- Walking distance to a commercial area (restaurants, bars, dry cleaners)
- Enough rooms to accommodate a guest room, workout room, office and our bedroom (a room could be multifunctional if space allowed)
- Enough space to fit the dining room furniture (that hutch almost pushed me past my breaking point)
- A fenced-in yard that was large enough to host a BBQ
- Garage space for at least one car
The only thing we ended up compromising was the yard. We have a yard in our new place, but it's not fenced (yet), and it's not conducive to entertaining. So we did pretty well. But now, after living in the temporary apartment, our next house has to have a view. Lucky these are not that difficult to come by in Seattle.
Across the street from our apartment, Elliot Bay Park stretches for a
bout a mile along the sound. Lisa discovered that this is an excellent place to begin bike rides, one of which took her all the way to West Seattle, where she managed to snap a photo with her camera of the Seattle skyline. It's not NYC, but there's not much that compares anyway. The park ends down buy the waterfront area and Pike Place market.Foz and I have enjoyed the park for our afternoon walks. I think he likes getting back to city living since I have to take him out for walks whereas, in CT
, he usually just got let out in the backyard. But he loves the park down by the water, and I tend to agree with him. It has a rather great view of Mount Rainier (it doesn't photograph that well, but you can make it out if you click on the photo and look directly above the two folks sitting on the grass). But we're coming to learn that there are great views from many places given the topography of Seattle, which is much more hilly than I imagined.
We've gotten used to everything being within walking distance, something I missed in my year in CT: the store, restaurants, dry cleaners, blockbuster, etc. The nearby restaurants are all reasonably good, save for a nasty BBQ experience...let's just say that Floyd's Place is out of the rotation. Buckley's has sufficiently satisfied the role of local pub. It's within falling distance of the apartment, has solid food and ale offerings, and a regular clientele that plays Playstation soccer against the bartender (He's unbeatable, so I'm wondering how attentive he is to his customers). Buckley's is also apparently the meeting place for the lesbian community before WNBA games at Key Arena. We have not yet made it to Chopstix, which is not an Asian restaurant, but rather a dueling piano bar.
, he usually just got let out in the backyard. But he loves the park down by the water, and I tend to agree with him. It has a rather great view of Mount Rainier (it doesn't photograph that well, but you can make it out if you click on the photo and look directly above the two folks sitting on the grass). But we're coming to learn that there are great views from many places given the topography of Seattle, which is much more hilly than I imagined.
We've gotten used to everything being within walking distance, something I missed in my year in CT: the store, restaurants, dry cleaners, blockbuster, etc. The nearby restaurants are all reasonably good, save for a nasty BBQ experience...let's just say that Floyd's Place is out of the rotation. Buckley's has sufficiently satisfied the role of local pub. It's within falling distance of the apartment, has solid food and ale offerings, and a regular clientele that plays Playstation soccer against the bartender (He's unbeatable, so I'm wondering how attentive he is to his customers). Buckley's is also apparently the meeting place for the lesbian community before WNBA games at Key Arena. We have not yet made it to Chopstix, which is not an Asian restaurant, but rather a dueling piano bar. Despite our affinity for our temporary neighborhood, we're looking forward to when the moving truck shows up with our stuff so we can move into the new place. Nigel is also looking forward to that as well; he's way into boxes and packing paper. Apologies for the long post, but the first few are likely to be long ones as we'll have a lot to share.
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