Le Weekend

We had a busy weekend with Zoe.

A recap:

Saturday:  sleep in. Make Swedish pancakes and bacon for breakfast. Pack lunches. Clean up.

Catch the ferry to Seattle. Drive around for a brief tour of Madison Park, the Arboretum, University of Washington (U District), Eastlake, and back to Alaskan Way. Park the car.

Board a bus to ride to Lake Union. Board Argosy boat for Lake and Locks Cruise.

Cruise & guided tour of Lake Union, complete with highlights: floating houses (including the "Sleepless in Seattle" floating house), Gasworks Park, Fremont cut,

Ballard Bridge and Fisherman's Terminal.

This fishing boat, the Gun-Mar, belonged to one of Gregg's Norwegian cousins.

Eat lunch on the boat. Cruise through the Hiram M. Chittenden Locks, which connects Lake Union (fresh water) with Puget Sound (salt water). Chittenden also designed the Panama Canal. On through Shilshole Bay,

out into the open waters of Puget Sound, around Magnolia Bluff and the Seattle waterfront.

Disembark the Argosy boat. Walk uptown to see if we can take Zoe up to the top of the tallest building in the city (Columbia Tower). It's closed on Saturdays.

Continue uptown, with brief tour of the Fairmont Olympic Hotel (former the residence of my great-grandmother). Look at shops along 5th Avenue, enter Nordstrom. Cross skybridge to Pacific Place. Show Zoe the L'Occitane store, the original (and factory) of which is in Manosque, France, near her home town.

Head toward Pike Place Market and down Harbour Steps to Red Robin for dinner (so Zoe can have one of many types of hamburger).

Dine while watching the sun set over the Olympic Mountains. Get into car and ride ferry home, with lights of Seattle twinkling in the distance.

My love, a.k.a. "the old man of the sea." He's not really old, but he is salty!

Sunday:  sleep in, pack lunches and head in the other direction, towards the Olympic Peninsula. Drive for about an hour, across the Hood Canal floating bridge, until we reach Port Townsend. Start at the beach,

and walk through a large meadow into the park, exploring the concrete bunkers and gun emplacements built before World War I.

There are many spectacular scenic viewpoints in this park,

from which it's possible to see all the way to Canada. This is the former U.S. Army base where the movie, "An Officer and a Gentleman" was filmed.

We ate our picnic near the lighthouse

and walked along the beach, up through another area of the park, to return to our car.

Driving into town, we bought frozen, chocolate-dipped bananas for Zoe & David, coffee for Gregg, and walked along, exploring the main street. There is a great antique mall where we spent some time browsing happily.

After an hour or so of driving, we stopped and ate dinner at our favorite Thai restaurant, Sawatdy, on Bainbridge Island. Then we went back home for the evening.

Today, it's laundry and housecleaning for me, work for Gregg and school for the kids.