Gastography

This days’ exploration brought us to Discovery Park for some much-anticipated hiking, along the area surrounding Alki Beach for some cityscape-viewing, to Ballard for lunch at Sitka & Spruce, and to Seward Park for views of Mt. Ranier.

Discovery Park

According to Seattle Parks & Rec, Discovery Park is the largest city park in Seattle. It overlooks Puget Sound, with views of the Cascade and Olympic Mountain ranges. This park features 2 miles of protected tidal beaches, open meadow lands, sea cliffs, forest groves, sand dunes, thickets and streams.

We walked along the North Beach path to the lighthouse, hooked around the South Beach path and looped back up on Loop Trail to the parking lot.

Alki Point

According to Wiki, Alki Point is the westernmost point in West Seattle. It juts out into the Puget Sound, marking the southern border of Elliot Bay.

Seward Park

According to Seattle Parks & rec, Seward Park is home to 300 acres of forest land, eagles’ nests, old growth trees, trails, shoreline, beaches, and more. We went for the hiking (which we were too tired to do), and the beautiful vista of Mt. Ranier.

Lunch In Ballard

We ate lunch at the lovely Sitka & Spruce in the Ballard area of town. Sitka & Spruce is a cheffy, ingredient-driven restaurant with a really cool setup – the kitchen is just a stove and a prep area and is right out front in the middle of everything. It’s a good place to go for creative inspiration, and the food is pretty great, too.

For more shots from this day (and others), check out our Seattle set on Flickr.

This past week, my DH and I took a much-needed vacation to the Seattle area. We ate tons of local seafood, took lots of pictures, hiked, dreamed, and bitched about the hills. A (mostly) good time was had by all.

These are shots from “Vacation Day 1” – Pike’s Place Market (I loved it every bit as much as I thought I would, even if the 1980s-era Frugal Gourmet wasn’t around for a tour) & Pioneer Square. I could visit ‘The Market’ on the regular with no problem (other than having to find parking and shove myself through throngs of lollygaggers during peak hours).

According to the Pike Place Market website, the market was brought about by public outcry due to price-gouging by produce middlemen in the early 1900s. Consumers were fed up, so City Councilman Thomas Revelle championed creation of a public street market that would give consumers a place to connect directly with farmers. Pike Place Market opened on August 17, 1907 with a total of eight farmers – who were met by 10,000 eager shoppers. Over a century later, Pike Place Market is America’s premier farmers’ market, with over 200 year-round permanent businesses, 190 craftspeople, 100 farmers who rent space by the day, 240 street performers, and more than 300 low-income apartments for the elderly.

Pioneer Square was also neat – lots of cool old architecture and little shops. According to the Pioneer Square website, it is the ‘birthplace of Seattle’ and the ‘city’s first neighborhood’.

Pike Place Market

Pioneer Square

 

Still to come:

Discovery Park, Seattle skyline, Whidbey Island, Deception Pass, Anacortes & Ballard Locks

Barnacles clinging to a clam shell from our trip to Seattle. This was one of many ‘nature things’ I picked up along the beaches we wandered. I was fascinated by the rounded rocks we just don’t get on the East Coast, as well as the sheer amount of evidence that animals actually eat in the wild – we don’t get that either, really, (or at least not nearly as much) on the EC – the beaches are most likely too populated for all that. This particular day (and in fact most days), the beaches we visited were either deserted or nearly so. This shell is from Discovery Park.