We arrived on Sunday afternoon, and our first stop was for lunch at Chinook's at the Fisherman's Terminal, which is just south of the Ballard Bridge. Heather's steamed clams were pretty good. My crab and shrimp caesar salad was equally good, just not quite as photogenic.
The sun was out, so we took advantage of it and went for a long walk in Discovery Park, a City park on site of the former Fort Lawton Army base. The old officers' homes are still there, and there is also an active FAA radar dome. The trails range from wide and well maintained, to narrow and overgrown.
We spent our first 3 nights with Heather's cousins in Ballard, which meant I was able to visit my favorite neighborhood coffee shop for breakfast.
That also meant we got to hang out with their cats, Licorice and Belle. We hardly saw Belle this trip, but Licorice was around quite a bit, especially towards dinner time. He had his own seat at the dinner table.
Occasionally you have to wait for a boat to pass under the Ballard Bridge in order to get back south to downtown Seattle.
Heather had some family things to take care of on Monday, so I went off to visit the Locks and Garden. The Locks, built in the early 1900's, connect Lake Union to Puget Sound.
Some of the old architectural details are really great.
There are also some newer sculptures out by the Fish Ladders.
The ships are raised quite a bit going from Puget Sound towards Lake Union. Here's the Alaska Mariner when it first enters the large lock at the level of Puget Sound.
Here it is getting ready to cast off before pulling out towards the lake. These 2 pictures were taken about 3 minutes apart.
There were almost no fish in the Fish Ladders, but the foxgloves in the Garden were blooming nicely.
From the Locks I continued around Shilshoe to the Marina area, where there is a newly renovated memorial to Leif Erikson. The tablets around the base of the statue represent rune stones, and have plaques with the names of local Scandinavian immigrants, of which there are quite a few in this area.
No visit to the Ballard and Fremont area of Seattle is complete without stopping for breakfast at The Dish, on Leary about halfway between the 2 communities. The corned beef hash was excellent, as were Heather's eggs benedict.
LIke many trolls, the Fremont Troll lives under a bridge, in this case it's the Aurora Bridge. That is a real Volkswagen bug under his left hand. We were there in the daytime, but the best time to see the troll is on a foggy, dark night.
He's not hard to find at all, just head for Fremont and look under the Aurora Bridge, on the corner of 36th St and Troll Ave.
Heather and I stopped to visit the Nordic Heritage Museum in Ballard, it was definitely worth the time.
There are quite a few displays about the immigrants from the various Scandinavian countries, what they had to go through to get to the U.S., and what they did once they got here. It's very well done, and one of the better museums of its type that I've seen.
For lunch on Wednesday we went to the Risotteria at Il Fornaio in downtown Seattle. One of the more tasty appetizers is the grilled octopus with celery and potatoes. I had that, a cup of soup and a salad for lunch.
Our table was tucked under the circular staircase that comes down from the main restaurant above. At first I thought it was kind of dark and out of the way, but then I looked up and realized it did have a view, just of something a bit more artistic than the downtown street outside.
Click here for more shots from around Seattle during the week of June 13 -19, 2010.
I'll also post separately for some of the different places that we went, like the Woodland Park Zoo, the mountains east of Everett along U.S. 2, the town of Leavenworth, Kubota Gardens, and Tacoma.
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