Day 2- Adventures in Seattle

So, woke up in the hotel to my 'late' morning alarm. Which was okay, since it was a vacation day waking at 7 was fine. Not a fantastic view out my window, but hey.. we were near the airport so what do you expect.
Trees. That's not what I expected. Fir trees, cedar, maples everywhere! So did I mention I've become a total California girl with taking palm trees, sycamore and Eucalyptus for granted? There I mentioned it.
I  have always liked big evergreens having grown up in San Jose within eyesight of the Santa Cruz redwood cloaked mountains. This gave me a reminder of those trees.
Okay moving on to the headache that is money shuffling and rental car.
Moving money from one account to the next so we have enough to rent the car and just enough for having breakfast before we head out on the wide open road.
So.. Seattle airport... complex.
We took the airport/hotel shuttle from the main terminal to the hotel. From the hotel we had to take it BACK to the airport in order to take the rental car shuttle to that complex.
Geez!
So, get there and discover that they won't take the money on our new cards because it doesn't have his name on it. Fine.. pull out phone, transfer money from one account to the other.. again.
FINALLY we get the car rented until the 10th.. which is Sunday. We figured we'd work out that extension when we got to Miki's house (the friend we're visiting). Compact car.. brand spankin' new Toyota Corolla with all the bells and whistles. Niiice. Oh, and it is black.
Devon plugs in his phone, turns on gps, and his music and we're off to find a Denny's.
Had no clue where we were going but remembered there was a Denny's on the way from the airport to the rental car complex. GPS it is.
Devon is having fun and frustrated at the same time. We had no idea what we were going to do once we got there other than driving to see Miki.
So, we were officially on vacation when we found the Denny's. My first wow was seeing a Big Leaf Maple tree right there like we would have a sweet gum tree or something.

                                
 During our drives back and forth we realized blackberries are considered a weed/natural fencing there. Sure enough, there was a bush hanging over the fence of the parking lot. What the heck. Short dirt hill to the fence and pluck a couple of berries, almost ripe. Nice!
 So.. inside we go and have a wonderful breakfast just like the other tourists and realized the sales tax in Seattle was almost 10%. whoa. Okay so tummies full, we decide might as well try and see what there is to see for free that was close. Of course all the things we really wanted to see were not close but grabbed a couple of brochures anyway.
Since the airport isn't in Seattle proper, we drove a bit and just took the highway.. me gawking at the trees. Yes, I was gawking and at one point got a bit choked up at how lush everything was even in the middle of a dry summer. Did I mention blackberries everywhere?
So, we get off the freeway and start heading into Seattle proper. Going through the long way.. through some of the not so pretty industrial side but seeing the space needle we both agreed we didn't feel the urge to go do that. We did get to see another iconic building in Seattle.

Starbucks HQ

Neither of us are SB people but had to take a picture for those of the audience that are. As we got closer to actual downtown, Devon wanted to try and find a 'harbor' park. Well... we got further and further into town, the road got narrower and people were getting... in the way. Well, after about the third cussing streak by Devon he just wanted to get out of there and decided to take a left toward the water.  Wrong street to choose.

Seattle Famous Market

Well if we wanted to find the Pike's Market.. it was right there. It was almost as bad as San Francisco Wharf district. Not a place for someone of Devon's short patience fuse. so, we just followed the car ahead of us until we found another street to come back up and head back the way we came.

Downtown Seattle

I didn't mention picturesque to the downtown description. Even Devon was impressed by the 'tunnel' of trees lining the main street. I realized they were maples and in the fall, it was likely a cavalcade of red and yellow and a nightmare to sweep up every day for the city.
We finally made it out of town and we pulled into a side street to park so he could use the gps on his phone to find the nearest 'park' with a view of the water.

I will stop here as this is getting lengthy. Will have to do a 2 parter for this entry since so much happened and pictures were taken. My full album is on Devon's facebook page if you want to see all the photos. Since the SD card port on my laptop wasn't working, had to use Miki's computer and instead of letting me do it, he did it for me. These were just from my camera, my phone has other photos coming with future entries.

Sure, not every day will be good, but there will always be something good about every day. Notice these things and celebrate them.  (Don't know where I got the quote from)