Our Seattle Trip

Seattle skyline, complete with sculpture gardens in front and Space needle!

For our 16th anniversary we decided to celebrate early this year with a trip to Seattle to see Bon Jovi in concert and have a weekend without the kids! We arranged for the kids to stay with my folks from Friday afternoon through Sunday afternoon and the 2 of us went off on a trip.

We left Friday after lunch, after dropping Jacob off at a babysitter and Josiah was in school, so it made it easy to start our drive up to Seattle. We got checked into our hotel around 4pm and were amazed by the great deal I had found online. You really never know what you're gonna get when you find these amazing deals... but this time it paid off! We were on the 3rd floor, on the corner of a building and had 2 balconies! But the view was amazing! We looked out over the bay, and small harbor right out front and the Olympic Mountains were far off to the right, and we could see Mt Rainier too, from our bed!

Anyway, after getting settled and I got all dressed up for a night on the town, we set off walking (as we continued to do all weekend) to a Sushi restaurant I found online that was supposed to have an awesome happy hour menu. We got to the restaurant at 5pm, which ended up being an awesome time because when we left at 6pm it was more than packed out with people waiting everywhere! The food was really awesome, and we ate an amazing sushi roll filled with different kinds of fish with a very tasty mango sauce drizzled on the top! In the middle of the restaurant was a really interesting Atrium filled with lots of small trees and plants and had very large skylights to let in natural light. The place was just just so fun.

After filling our tummies, we set off on a small walking tour downtown, and watched an amazing sunset and then walked towards the space needle and took some great night-time pictures. Then we headed towards the stadium to get seated early.

We found our "nosebleed" seats very quickly and got ourselves some water and just waited for the concert to start. We love to people watch so this made for a very quick transition. The opening band was easily described as boring. Jonny's opinion is that the opening act needs to be sufficiently close to the same sound as the main band, but not nearly the quality so that you know when the main act comes on stage, you're seeing a good show. Luckily they only played for 40 minutes! Bon Jovi played 2 1/2 hrs! It was a truly amazing concert! But I could possibly be bias as I've wanted to see them since my sister saw them in the mid 80's. There was the opening act of course that was not only super loud with the band rocking out and people screaming everywhere and flashes from cameras happening, but it was just the excitement from the build-up of waiting coming to fruition. It was well worth the wait!! I took a short video of Bon Jovi's opening and my camera promptly died! I was so upset and irritated with myself for not thinking to charge the battery! Oh well, I sufficed with pictures taken with my cell phone. At least I have a video! And I am good with that. There were well placed fast songs in a row, followed by Jon Bon Jovi speaking about the songs in between and then slower songs sang, and about 5 or 6 wardrobe changes made by him. The was a definite end to the pre-made concert set, and all the band members left the stage and it was completely black in the concert hall and people were wild with screaming and chanting and applause, it was clearly explained as insane! This lasted only a few minutes before all the band members charged back onto the stage, and Jon explained that was a good concert "now let's really have some fun!" And he let off into a 45 minute set of his earlier songs, both ballads and rock-ier hits from the 1980's and early 90's. Of course, I thought this was the best part because it was all my favorite songs!

We enjoyed ourselves thoroughly, although maybe not Jonny quite as much as there was a very drunk, very obnoxious lady beside him that kept punching him in the arm throughout the entire concert and even at one point bumped his hip with hers. She was dancing all over the place, arms flailing and even fell over 3 times! We were not impressed with her at all, but Jonny did his best to ignore her and made the best of it. Good for him! :-)

On Saturday morning we didn't sleep in much as we had plans to walk around Seattle. We dropped into a cozy looking place for breakfast with an amazing view of the Olympic mountains and ate Eggs Benedict, mine with crab, and Jonny's with smoked salmon. One word, fabulous!

Then we strolled through the winding pathways of the Public Market, aka Pike Place Market, and dodged the streaming groups of people, and bought a few treasures for our kids of course. Then we set off towards the Olympic Sculpture gardens with big, delicious cinnamon rolls to eat on the grass overlooking the bay. We walked through the outside, FREE, exhibit for a few hours and enjoyed the fantastic weather we were blessed with for the weekend! We soaked in sun, and good food, and great art, and decided we were done and wanted to head back home. So we grabbed our car and left Seattle and headed to Cabella's for some "kid-free" shopping. Those with young kids can appreciate the sound of that! :-)

After arriving home late Saturday night we went to the local McMenamin's for a yummy dessert and glass of wine and headed home. We slept awesome in our own beds and enjoyed our last morning at home in the quiet of the house!