Saturday, January 16, 2010

Seattle/Oly Saturday

This Saturday was truly fantastic! I had the day completely off . . . no school, no work, no babysitting gigs, nothing. I decided the ideal way to celebrate would be getting up at 6am to go get my tires replaced. Yep, I sure know how to party. Actually, I just wanted to make sure I had time to get the tires replaced AND go to brunch with Kristine and Megan AND get down to Olympia in a timely fashion. It actually wasn't so bad . . . I dropped the Rufus (yeah, my car is named Rufus) off and spent a couple hours wandering around chilly, sleepy Ballard (I get Rufus's maintenance done at the Ballard Firestone . . . FYI, they've always done a really good job and I highly recommend them). Here's a couple of things I saw during my wanderings:

The Ballard Sip and Ship: A coffee house/post office. It wasn't open, but it looked really cute, so I googled it just now. Apparently, they serve Batdorf and Bronson coffee/espresso, as well as sandwiches and pastries, and also run a full-service post office and sell cards, gift wrap, and knicknacks. I've never heard of anything like that before; I will definitely be checking it out soon!




Carnegie's, a restaurant/bar in an old Carnegie Library building. So cool! I am definitely going there sometime!

So anyway, my original plan for my walk was to end up in Cafe Besalu, but it was too far and I was too cold, so I ended up popping into a Tully's instead. I had some coffee and hung out for awhile, and just as I was finishing my coffee Firestone called to tell me my tires were done, so I headed back, got the car, and went to meet Megan and Kristine for brunch!


We drove to Belltown and went to the Bang Bang cafe. It was excellent! Tasty, healthy, inexpensive breakfast burritios, lots of vegetarian options, but some meat stuff, too, if you're into that, and good coffee. We met the owner (well, Megan and I met her; Kristine already had), and she was really nice and friendly. Plus, it's just cool to go into a restuarant and the owner's right there, taking orders and making drinks just like the rest of the staff. Plus, she remembered Kristine on sight, which is pretty impressive considering the amount of people she must see every day.

After brunch I took off for Olympia, and spend a cozy, rainy afternoon with my aunt and cousin at RC Ridge. I've been going to RC ridge since I was a kid, but I still have trouble describing exactly what it is to people. So there's this married couple, two really awesome people, and quite a long time ago they built this big treehouse type thing in the woods in Olympia. The husband takes photographs in his studio in the basement (it's where we've gotten all our family pictures done since I was little). Upstairs, there's homemade rootbeer, soup, and other delicious goodies. There's also a shop with beautiful jewelry and other treasures, and wonderful company and conversation. The wife (I don't know if she'd like me sharing their names on the internet so I'll just call her "The Goddess" since she jokes that her husband's the boss, but she's the goddess) is like the ultimate hostess . . . she introduces everyone to everyone else, makes everyone feel comfortable, welcome, and loved, and organizes crafts/parties/treasure hunts from time to time. RC ridge isn't open to the public; it's just friends, and friends bring their friends, etc. Most of the time when we go there we don't get pictures done or buy anything, we just hang out. Today, everyone was doing collage valentines -- making collages from magazines and putting them on little doilies which the Goddess then hung on the windows. It was so much fun . . . they are lovely people and I was so glad I got to see them today.

After RC Ridge came a deliciously fattening Red Robin dinner and then I drove home. Now I'm sleepy, and happy, and not especially excited about a day of studying and work tomorrow . . . today was like a mini-vacation, and I'm not sure I'm ready for it to be done.

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