Hello readers! I am sorry the blog was quiet last week. Collin and I took an unbelievable vacation to the Pacific Northwest. It was absolutely incredible...

My travel bug has been placated, for a little while at least. We flew to Seattle on Thursday morning and arrived around 2pm. After hopping on a bus to our rental car we drove downtown to see the sights. Immediately after stepping out of the airport I knew I was in love. The weather was utter perfection. Cool and breezy.

We drove downtown and found a parking spot near Pike Place Market. I have a soft spot for markets. And this one was awesome. It has stalls and stalls of beautiful bouquets of flowers, fresh fish, fruits, and vegetables. Other stalls were selling homemade jams, jellies, jewelry and other goodies. The merchants were trying to get patrons to their stalls by offering samples. I tasted the best pear and apple I've ever had that day. But we had our eye on the restaurants.

We meandered around until we found something that peaked our appetites and it didn't take long. We saw a long line at a chowder stall and figured if there is a line then it must be good. Luckily this was not the first rodeo for the ladies taking orders and they quickly had us all walking away with steaming bowls of yummy-ness. Collin and I both ordered smoked salmon chowder and found a lovely table under an ivy covered awning. I was too impatient and quickly learned that the chowder was incredibly hot. I snapped a few pictures while I waited for it to cool.

After we finished our first course we were in search of our second. We had come across a french bakery earlier and knew we had to pop in. Collin and I stood in front of a long row of all things pastry and took our time deciding what delicacies we wanted to indulge in. Collin decided on a beautiful palmier and I went for the chocolate-filled croissant. We ordered a coffee and peppermint tea and found a place to devour our goodies. After thoroughly stuffing ourselves we decided we should walk around a bit more.

We walked over to a lovely park that overlooked the waterfront. Green space in the middle of a sprawling metropolis is a nice surprise. The weather was perfect and we snapped a few more pictures for mementos.

I decided that we should pick up some fruit to take back to Port Angeles to have at our hotel. Fresh fruit from farmers market stalls are hard to pass up. We picked out two plump apples, a bunch of bananas and two oranges and made our way back up to the downtown streets.

Unfortunately the 5 o'clock traffic hadn't died down yet so we were driving through downtown very slowly. Fortunately downtown Seattle is tree-lined with great architecture so we didn't mind too much.

Downtown Seattle street through our car window

We slowly made our way back to the highway and headed to our hotel in Port Angeles. We arrived about two hours later to a roaring fire in the lobby of our hotel and two very polite concierges. After finding our room we tucked in for the night to rest up for our next adventures.

Check back soon for more of our vacation!