Top 5 Places I miss in & around Seattle

5. Olympic Athletic Club
I know this isn't representative of Seattle. You can't get a shot of the building with the space needle in the background. There are no tourists that visit it. It's not in a particularly hip part of Seattle (it's in Ballard, which I consider cool, but I'm not cool, so it doesn't count). But I used to visit the place religiously. All the people that worked there were super cranky and I never talked to anyone. Just went in, did my workout, and left. I loved it. It felt like church to me. I miss it.



4. Safeco Field
I never liked baseball until I saw it played in Safeco Field. It's a beautiful stadium. More importantly, it's an outdoor stadium unlike what we have here in Minnesota, where players lose sight of the ball because of the white rooftop. Its construction was voted down several times by Seattle voters but it got built anyway. I swore I would never step foot in it, but I loved the place. They had good garlic fries there, too. Sushi, Dixie's BBQ, you name it. Oh, and the Mariners, who were good when I lived in Seattle. Perhaps they wish I had not moved. Perhaps they can pay me a stipend to move back?




3. Eateries
I realize this is cheating by including several places under one category, but I cannot choose just one place. I love them all.

Monsoon: wonderful, delectable Viet Namese food. The best Sea Bass in the world.

Kingfish: Soul food. The place had crazy hours and people literally lined up an hour before it opened to get a table. Worth it!

Brownbag: Breakfast in Seattle on weekends was like a sport. You hunt down the restaurant with the fewest number of people standing outside waiting. Brownbag was a favorite, even though it was on the east side. I crossed the bridge for it almost monthly. They baked their own bread right there and had to bring your toast on a separate plate because their skillets were so packed full. MMMMM.....potato sausage skillet....I miss you.

LaVaca: A hole-in-the-wall Mexican lunch joint a block away from where I worked. I'm sure it wouldn't have passed food inspection, but I refused to try to find out because it was so good. The Chicken Verde burrito was the best. Eventually new owners bought it and tried to change how things were done. They stopped generously throwing in extra sauce and cheese and stuck to strict portioning. Changed recipes to save money, eliminated ingredients. I always laughed as I was gorging down my 8-pound burrito because I knew "La Vaca" translates to "The Cow", which I surely could become while eating off their menu!

5 Spot: If I had to pick one favorite, this would probably be it. They have a regular menu, which is small and a rotating menu. Each quarter they change the theme of the rotating menu. The "Chicago" theme sticks out in my mind as does something tropical where I had fresh rum-soaked banana bread with fruit salsa made of mangoes, pineapple, and papaya with a drizzle of caramel and mango sorbet.

Little coffee stands everywhere: There's one 2 seconds away from anywhere you are in Seattle. It's a cliche, I know, but it's a cliche for a reason. Starbucks was ok, Seattle's Best better, Tully's slightly better, but the really good coffee was to be had at those little coffee kiosks on the corner. The one I happened to frequent...frequently was located on 4th and James, which is a nasty part of town, but it's where I worked. The coffee was so thick I almost needed a spoon. Happy Hour was at 3 right before the lady closed. She was there every day, rain or shine. And the beauty of the stand is, the same person that I gave my order to actually made the coffee and even took my money, reducing the chance of my order getting screwed up since it didn't have to get filtered through 8 different people (like that old game "telephone" where you whisper something into someone's ear, they whisper it into another's and so on...at the end, the last person says what they heard and compares it to what the original person whispered and hilarity ensues over how different the interpretation was from the original statement, except when you are jonesin' for a short Americano with two shots and a few ice cubes so you can drink it THIS CENTURY and you get a decaf iced Mochachino, hilarity does not ensue!).

2. Olympic Peninsula
Everything good was on the peninsula. Good motorcycle roads all twisty and hilly and super smooth with no radar guns pointing at you and little traffic. You have to take a ferry to get there from Seattle, but you are first on and first off with a motorcycle bypassing long lines of commuters. There's the Olympic mountain range, which is breathtaking. There's plenty of camping. Small, pastoral towns. One day I'm gonna own me a house there.

Here's DH and me 3 years ago up at Hurricane Ridge.


1. The Salish Lodge/Snoqualmie Falls
One of the most beautiful places on earth. The Lodge sits right atop the falls. You can hike down to the base of the falls which is worth doing a couple of times. Or, if you are lazy or have already done it, just hang out at the top where there is a small park. There's lots of facts I could look up and tell you about the waterfall (I don't have them memorized), but that's not what I care about. It's a place I visited regularly from the time I was 15 until I left. Twin Peaks was filmed there, which is what originally drew me to visit. After that, it was just its beauty that kept me coming. And once I became a teenager, my friends and I realized that we were basically alone there at night. We were always respectful of the place. Just basically hung out admiring the sound of rushing water without the background noise of lookie-loos.

Before DH and I were married we would stay at the Lodge regularly. It was a pretty upscale hotel with a quite upscale restaurant. Save for our impass with the snotty wine steward, the service made you feel like the queen (or king) of the world. They even had those little table duster thingies and cleaned your table cloth after you finished your main course! I just loved that. That was when we had disposable income, which we were quite good at disposing of. To add to the list of reasons I love this place, getting there was also quite a treat. It was at the top of a 2-lane highway, which meandered through beautiful forest down through the snoqualmie valley. It was one of the best motorcycle rides in the region.

The lodge also had the best spa and pool in the world. We loved it so much we got married there, which is almost as good as loving the lodge so much I married the lodge.

*Sniff*. I miss Seattle. Until I get stuck in traffic there upon visiting. Then I'm happy to return home!