Family Visit: Part 1

Alisha says: We really enjoyed having my parents and sister visit us this past week. We tried to show and do a variety of things to give them a good taste of Seattle.

Day 1: Downtown Seattle Day. We parked downtown and first had lunch in the revolving restaurant in the Space Needle. I wanted to do this before we moved and was really glad that we did. It was a cloudy day but we still got great views. After lunch we went up to the observation deck to look around some more before returning to ground level. We then walked through the Olympic Sculpture Park and along the water front to Pikes Place Market. It was great walking around in the middle of the day on a weekday, it was not busy at all. My dad loves fish and we stopped at each fish vendor so he could check them out. One place had smoked salmon and asked my dad if he wanted to taste it and then gave him a huge chunk, it was enough that we all could have several tastes. Yummy!

Day 2: After some light rain during the night we woke up to clear blue skies and warm temperatures, it was probably the nicest day so far of the year. We took a nice walk through the arboretum where the azaleas of many different colors were in full bloom. Our next activity was renting canoes from the UW and paddling around by the arboretum on Lake Washington. The water was smooth and we saw lots of ducks, a few dozen turtles sunning themselves on logs, a handful of herons (one eating a fish).
In the late afternoon we went to the Ballard Locks. We were lucky and got to watch a really big boat go through the locks as well as a few smaller ones.

Day 3: After a morning stroll at Magnuson Park we spent a wonderful afternoon at the Seattle Temple. I then had to battle Seattle rush hour traffic all the way to the airport and home. It was crazy but so worth it as we picked up my sister to join us for a few days. For dinner we took them to a Thai restaurant, not only was it Thai which is a bit adventurous for my family but it was a vegetarian Thai place. I don't think my dad has ever had thai or tofu before so I was a little nervous. We ordered a few dishes to share and hoped for the best. Everyone tried everything and they all said it was tasty, whew!