Seattle Neighborhood Tour

For all intents and purposes we are done unpacking. A few odds and ends need to be put away in the office, but it's going to take some time to finish that up. We chose not to bring our desk from Florida, so we have a lot of those desk drawer items lying around the room in piles. We intend to buy some real bedroom furniture by the end of September, so some of our mismatched dressers will be transfered to the office in the fall.

So on Sunday we celebrated our unpacking accomplishments by going into Seattle to check out a farmer's market and some of Robb's favorite foods he tried while I was still in Florida. The high that day was about 65 and was supposed to rain most of the day. We were very disappointed that by the time we got to Seattle it had stopped raining. Both of us have new raincoats and have been looking forward to trying them out. I'm sure that there will be plenty of opportunities for us to break in our raincoats. It just wasn't yesterday.

First we went to the Ballard neighborhood to catch the farmer's marker where we bought some beautiful vegetables and a tomato plant. We didn't spend a lot of time in Ballard because we were hungry and wanted to get lunch, but we'll go back soon to check out some of the local restaurants and shops. After Ballard we went to the Phinney Ridge neighborhood to eat at Red Mill Burgers (http://www.redmillburgers.com/). This little restaurant is considered one of the best places to get a burger in Seattle. Robb promised that the burgers would be good and the onion rings even better. So we shared a burger and an order of onion rings (we planned on eating at several places that day). Burger...pretty good. Onion rings...heaven on earth. I swear they were the best onion rings I've ever had and I cannot explain why. It's a good thing that Seattle is so far away from us, or else I'd be eating there every day.

After resisting ordering a second batch of onion rings we headed to the Fremont neighborhood for another farmer's market. This farmer's market was more of a flea market and was not quite as impressive as Ballard's vegetable and fruit stands. But we walked around Fremont to check out cute little independent shops (they've got some great record stores, art stores, various knick-knacks, etc.) I was really looking forward to eating at Yak's to try a hum-bow (or something of the sort.) Robb says it's like an egg roll but in a more pastry-like form. Unfortunately we found out they were closed on Sundays. We then headed to the Greenwood neighborhood and ate some tapas at Olive You, a little Greek joint. We tried some stuffed mushrooms (good, but not $7+ good) and spanakopita (wonderful!) At this point it was pretty late in the day and we decided to head back to Federal Way.

We decided to cap off our day of eating at a local restaurant in town called La Casa Bella. We are always on the hunt for good local restaurants, and Federal Way tends to be lacking in that department. But Casa Bella looks like it may be a winner. While I thought my pasta was a little boring, Robb had a beautiful seafood saffron ravioli. It was one of the most interesting and well done pasta dishes that we've tasted in a long time. And the prices were reasonable. We look forward to going back and trying more local deliciousness.

I suppose we should get jobs so we can support our eating habits.