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Good afternoon all...finally I have finished all my bill paying chores, and am mucho money lighter....

And so to continue with our Seattle weekend...

Saturday morning, we leisurely got up, and went off to the Market grocer, a neat market, near the motel...now we always like to get the same motel room, at a particular motel in Seattle, because it has a front room, a bedroom, and a small kitchen...believe it or not, even on these Seattle weekends, I still wind up cooking....I just dont like getting up out of bed, and having to go out to eat breakfast...so we always go to this neat little market, and buy lots of goodies, to eat and take home...they have lots of things, like different various breads, and super premade salads, that we dont get back home in Olympia...plus they carry a particular beer, which BigDom is especially fond of, and he cant find it anywhere else but this little market...

So off to the market we went, and bought lots and lots of goodies, and wound up mucho dinero poorer...

Then we headed back to the motel, I cooked a yummy breakfast, and then we relaxed and wound up watching sports on TV...because it was so warm and so dang humid outside, we preferred to stay indoors in our air-conditioned motel room and drink....

Later in the evening, we thought, we would go down to the wharf, as usually later in the evening, parking spaces becomes more available, and one does not have to walk for 10miles to get to the good stuff...But we made a critical error...this is summertime, and the tourists were out in full force, as well as the locals, rejoicing in the beautiful weather...

The parking lots, the parking meters, everything was absolutely jammed up...the streets of the wharf were packed, people were falling out of the tourist traps, and I imagine the waiting time for restaurant seating would be out of sight, so our motto being 'Be Flexible', we promptly left the wharf, and the tourists, and vowed to remind ourselves that summertime is not the best time for us to visit the wharf..better in the fall or winter, when the kids are back in school...

So we went to Ballard, not far from Seattle, and down to the Ballard Locks, on the water...there are several great restaurants there, that we have been to, so we thought we would go...we picked Rays, one of our favorites...good grief...getting into the parking lot was a big long line, but luckily, by this time it was valet only parking, so we were able to drive right to the door, and a valet took the car, and in we went...

Now Rays has an upstairs and downstairs dining...downstairs is more posh, and hoity-toity, and has their own menu....upstairs has the lounge, the bar, and is more casual and has its own menu...we have been to both upstairs and downstairs dining, so where we went, would be determined by who had the shortest waiting time...downstairs proved to be an hour waiting time, but upstairs was 45 minutes if you wanted outside on the terrace...or shorter if you wanted indoor...BigDom and I opted to dine indoors, and being as there were only the two of us, we got immediate seating....

We commenced with a few beers, and then had a superb meal ...appetizers or deep fried calamari(squid) and chilled giant prawns...for dinner I had grilled salmon, and BigDom had grilled halibut...we ate our own, and sampled each others food, and it was genuinely superb....

What is really nice, is that no matter whether you dine upstairs or downstairs, and they both have separate menus, you can actually order from either menu, no matter where you are dining, and its all prepared by the same chef...I guess its just that downstairs dining is more gracious, and the downstairs menu is a little more expensive, and has slightly more generous portions...BigDom and I wound up ordering about half our meal from the downstairs menu and half from the upstairs menu....Altho the restaurant was packed to the rafters, both upstairs, downstairs, inside and outside, service was very fast, and the food wonderful, and the beer was flowing, so it was a success...

After dinner, we returned to the motel, and sat out on the patio, just outside our room...by then it had cooled down, the humidity had left, and we were able to enjoy the rest of our evening, watching the lights of the Seattle skyline, begin to flicker on, as dusk approached, and this was all made more beautiful, by the sight of Mt. Rainier, slowly disappearing in the dusk, to be replaced by the beautiful stars dotting the sky...

So we did not get to the wharf, no Ferry Boat ride, and no shopping in the Wharf toursity shops...but that is trivial, for we know all too well, that once the summer passes, and the tourists go back home, the wharf will again return to normal...The wharf is always somewhat crowded no matter when you go, as its a wonderful place to go for a fine meal, a visit to the Aquarium, shopping in many, many shops, and of course the ferry boats...but BigDom and I have learned to be flexible, and if one set of plans falls through, Seattle is still full of enough to do to keep anyone happy....alternate plans work just as well as original plans...

Altho we met no odd or interesting people that day, I did have a nice experience....At one point in his military career, BigDom, was stationed, while in the Army Reserves, at an armory in Seattle...so on our way from the Seattle wharf to Ballard, he took me to see his former armory....it was interesting to see this...one new thing he noticed, was that the whole fence surrounding the military area had what he called 'concertina wire' all around the top of the fence...I had never heard of 'concertina wire', but it looked like huge rolls of barbed wire placed around the tops of the fence...we surmised that this must have been in response to 9/11, as an added security measure...

There were several soldiers milling around, and many cars with military IDs on them, in the parking lot...we guessed, that many of those reservists were either in summer camp, or out in the field, as this was fairly late at night...if it had just regular weekend drills, the soldiers would have already been dismissed...much as BigDom, loved his military experiences, he just grinned, at those uniformed soldiers, glad that he was now retired from the military...

Now, he says, once he retires from the trusty post office, he will feel much better, free to do as he pleases, when he pleases...

Memo to self: Never get into a beer drinking contest with Mom or Dom.

Sounds to me like you guys had a superior type Saturday for yourselves. Ray's dining arrangement sounds like a cruise ship. I discovered that one does not have to dress up and join the Captain and his gazillion guests for the formal meal. I prefer to head to the upper club area, pick and choose from two menus while watching the entertainment of the evening. Sometimes stand-up comedy, or a singer, or a band some evenings.

I honestly believe that I could happily live forever on a cruise ship with all the pampering, entertainment, work-out and massage rooms, all the interesting people from around the world to meet - just about the perfect way to live. All they'd have to add is high speed internet access to make it heaven for me.

Sounds like great eating a good time.No Dungeness crab on the menu? and did you manage to avoid be side-swiped by a flying sea bass down at Pike's Market?