Pacific drifters

Well there wasn't much to report from during the week, but the weekends are the silver lining right!

The weekend started on Friday (or course) I was madly in the heat of the day trying to work out what dish to take to Jade's bring your dish gathering. As we don't have all the necessary baking equipment I thought something simple and sweet was the way forward. Something slightly British with local yumminess... hello Eton mess. I had everything, local berries, cream , yoghurt (to offset the cream), more berries for the coulis, little disposable cups, but wait meringue! This was what I wasn't counting on, it being hard to find meringues. The first shop assistant couldn't understand me, but then said the same word (go figure!), the second one was keen to get the bakery to make some (love it!) but the bakery weren't so willing. Then after a semi-wild goose chase, I found them at Trader Joe's (my new love!). This little supermarket is great! It's small and seems to have only what you need!... but I digress!

Chris and I threw together a dozen mini messes and headed over to Jade's place in Belltown. And what a place! She lives in an am-azing penthouse apartment which has it's own private deck. We arrived to a flurry of activity around the kitchen and bbq. There were delicious dishes everywhere... what a feast! We met some fabulous and entertaining people and had our best day yet since being here. All the dramas of the mini messes accompanied by the moving stresses floated away with a cold beer, great company and a kick-arse view over the Sound as the sun dipped into the ocean. A fab night!

The next day we were up (not so) bright but early to head on a mini road trip to Portland. Somewhere that has been on my radar of 'places I must visit one day' for ages, and today is that day! With sun shining, we grabbed a quick coffee and hit the road in the trusty 'Impala!' (what's not to love about a plastic wooden dash!). It really was a shame the main purpose of the trip was to grab some electrical domestic items, etc. to save on tax, instead of being a more relaxed 'take a wander of discovery' kinda time. Oh well it could be worse!

The match was really exciting with the Sounders pushing forward a lot early in the first half. Then disaster (and the associated disbelief of the crowd): Tottenham scored! (see Dad there is another supporter!) Luckily though the crowd got into swing cheering on the home side resulting in a 3 all draw.

Our third week in Seattle was consumed by viewings on both the home front for us and the workspace for me. Earlier in the week we were unfortunately declined for what we thought was going to be our new home. It really derailed us, left us annoyed and made our timeframe to find a place that much tighter. The fact is we don't have a US credit history notably weighed against us. Luckily though realtors are used to dealing with this but for independent landlords it's not always the case. So our search continued...



Meanwhile our friend Peter has lucked out on the property front and after a nice meal at the Row Boat we helped him move what little belongings he had across to his new place. He picked a great spot in Capital Hill, right in the thick of it. So much so we headed over to his on Sunday, for dinner at Manhattan, seriously yummy. It should be noted that these guys will make a mean margarita on a Monday morning... see Monday's aren't all bad!



Other highlights this week included the opening of the Ballard Beer Company, which we had a beer and raised our glasses to mark Sally's birthday (sorry we missed it in Oz). A lunchtime trip to Urban Uprising, which is very similar to the Finders Keepers markets in Sydney and Melbourne. It's a twice a year craft/handmade market full of all sorts of goodies. Then after another viewing we stumbled upon the Seafood festival, which was hard not to miss with all the road closures. We had a lot of fun here indulging in wood smoked salmon, perusing the markets, enjoying the live music and squeezing in a local pale ale. The atmosphere matched the weather, warm and sunny.

It's a hard life when your husband starts his first day at work... The sun has been shining and I have a whole new city to explore! Never fear I am making use of this limbo time to begin our property search and to also look into co-working spaces for me to freelance from. I found some amazing spaces, and it is going to be hard to decide where to work out of. I guess though I should wait until I know where we're going to be living so I don't have a crazy commute! But good research anyway.

The week flew on by, the highlights were heading out to dinner with Chris and his new college Peter for Peter's birthday. A low key meal and yummy meal around South Lake Union. All being from Sydney we had a lot to chat about and help each other with and drew some interesting comparisons from our experiences so far. And the other highlights were exploring more of Fremont and Capital Hill, viewing the stunning works by Zaira Forman (Mum you'd love this), Chris generously surprising me with a gift and our first Independence day!

Our first Independence day started with a visit to Gas Works Park, which was filling rapidly by the time we go there at lunchtime. Families and friends were gathering for the festivities and I assume sitting it out until the 10pm fireworks. After taking a moment to take it all in, we decided to make a move and take a wander around Fremont. Our first stop was at the local Fremont Brewery to sample a tasty pale ale. Sitting outside, placing our drinks on a wooden barrel, hanging baskets overhead and the sun beating down on us, it could easily be confused for a glorious British summer day. We really soaked it up. This is amazing! The ale was going down way too easily. After a bite to eat at somewhere unremarkable we treated ourselves to an ice-cream at Bluebirds, which is where I tried my first floater, or as we know it by back home a 'spider'. Delicious!



The evening entailed heading to the rooftop for the 4th of July party. We'd invited Peter over and weirdly had all bought exactly the same beer! We also caught up with familiar faces from the building. The fireworks we nice but the staff were rude, I won't go into detail but the festivities came to an abrupt holt and everyone was made to leave...



Sunday we headed out to West Seattle, mainly to check out the farmer's market I'd read about and it didn't disappoint! We bought all our fruit and veg for the week and the prices were amazing. This whole tray of berries only $15 (and the punnets are deep!). The afternoon was spent on the sunny rooftop playing games while eating berries!

Our first week flew by, and not a moment was wasted. We were up early day one to meet with our relocation agent and sort out things like banking and phones. It was all feeling surreal, my body was aching from the flight and the jet-lag wasn't helping.


Day two involved navigating the public transport system to take a trip over to the U-district for a little retail therapy. We were surprised that the mall was outdoors, lined with hanging baskets of colourful flowers and communal umbrellas (in case the weather turned). This was perfect because the day was too nice to spend indoors. On the way home whilst sat on a step waiting for the bus, the Google car drove by. I'm hoping it wasn't filming as I'm sure I was chucking a leggy... great. The bus dropped us by the lake and we took a slow walk back, stopping to sit by the pier to take in the day. As we sat, a guy guided in his mate's boat using two beer bottles as signal aids, waiting for it to pull in close enough to jump on. His shirtless mate hovered the boat and to our surprise yelled over to us 'Hey you guys wanna join? They've brought way too much beer on here to drink'. Chris politely declined and almost immediately, we were kicking ourselves about the decision. It was a real Dumb and Dumber moment, you know the one where they decline to help a bus load of swimsuit models on their tour. But with shopping under our arms and our swimmers still in freight we weren't really feeling it. Turns out the very same thing happened to our new mate Peter, just the day before except he took up the offer. It sounds like we didn't miss too much, but sounded nice all the same.


The rest of the week was spent checking out different surburbs to gauge what feels right for us, and even did a few touristy things in-between. Sunday was spent watching the Pride Parade, which is very similar to Mardi Gras back home, just in the daytime. We had a good time there and met some interesting people before scoring the perfect window seat at a busy cafe adjacent to the parade route - perfect for people watching!



Every evening was spent by the lake watching the sun set realising how lucky we really are.