Kristine's big adventure

Thursday came and went and it seems like Kristine was only here for a minute. She was here for a little more than 2.5 days, but we did make the best of it. Our original plan was to pick her up from the airport and go kayaking on lake union, however the weather disagreed with our plan. So we dropped her stuff off at our place and went right to the Pike Place market for some lunch. It was a bit too chilly to be in a boat that afternoon. We spent some time meandering through the market and eventually got some lunch at a place that tony and i didn't even know existed-that market is HUGE! we find new stuff everytime we go.

So after lunch we walked around town and made a very neccessary pit stop at the chocolate box so Kristine could get her fix :)

She had never had gelato!!! So we got her to taste it and then to order the greatest hot ( or iced in her case) cocoa in the world- not that there was much arm twisting to get her to eat or drink some chocolate. I think sometimes, for being such a teeny thing, it leaks out of her pores :)

After all the window shopping we were in need of a rest. So we went back to our place to chill for a minute.

I can't believe that i am writing this, but the poor girl has never been to a trader joe's either. Well i guess they are not that big in Tulsa ( where she has lived for awhile, up until the recent move to Vegas.) So i can't blame her for this.

We got some snacks and went home to get to bed early. We had a big adventure planned for the next day.

We were hoping to take her to the same island that we went to with val, but we missed the ferry. So we got some brunch and took the next ferry to orcas island ( still one of the san juans, just not the one we wanted to go to).

I am glad that we went to that one thought, because the weather was on our side and there are over 30 miles of great hiking there.

We drove all over the island which was not hard to do considering it is like 28 miles total.

Once we got to the top of Mount Constitution, where Kristine was happy to see some green trees and snow, we decided to start our hike.

I thought it would be a good idea to hike to the lake, not having any idea where the lake was, other than by the signs. I know now that was a bad idea. Well, not the worst, but not leg friendly for a girl who was just murdered by the trainer the day before ( me).

We ended up descending about 2/3 of the mountain ( about 1700 feet in about 2miles). That was all fine and dandy, but what goes down, must come up ( at least when the car is parked at the top it does.) so after a grueling climb we decided to drive down the mountain and look for more trails on the island.

We found a nice trail that led to the beach. Unfortunatley we didn't get to see any whale, eagles, alpacas or camels, but we had a really great time on our hike. We did however get to the beach and see a lot of little dead crabs and some crazy looking seaweed that had washed ashore.

When we got back to the ferry tony and kristine spent some quality time discussing the draft ( football i think, who knows, my mind starts to shut down when too much of that talk goes on).

I'm sure tony was loving every minute of football talk, since we don't live near anthony anymore ( his football/drinking/video game/make fun of the wives buddy from san fran).

We got home and i took her for the infamous belltown pizza bean dip that people have become addicted to shortly after tasting it. She too agreed that it has addicting qualities to it.

Saturday Tony had some hockey to watch so Kristine and i went shopping again. I actually walked into the gap, and looked around even! We spent a good part of the afternoon wandering aimlessly through downtown until we got too hungry.

Once our bellies were crying, we went back to our place to get tony and had some lunch at Bamboo Garden ( one of my favorite vegetarian places here).

After lunch we went to Ballard, another neighborhood of seattle and did some shopping at archie mcphees ( it is a crazy store with lots of unneccessary crap, but it is amazing http://www.mcphee.com/

Once we left the store it was almost time for Kristine to catch a plane home. So we grabbed her luggage from the apartment and made one last run to the Chocolate box to get snacks and then made a mad rush to the airport.

I think that Kristine was the shortest, fastest, most adventureous visitor yet!