Eating our way through Seattle

No sleeping in today. We were out the door by 6:45am for our trip to Seattle, Washington. Since it is only about two hours away, we thought it would be a great way to spend the day.

We arrived at the Pike Place Market a little later than anticipated due to the heavy traffic. We did not want to be late for our 10am Pike Place Market Tour with Savor Seattle Food Tours  ($39 USD).

We met the group at … take a guess … Starbucks. Our guide’s name was Brett. He was very knowledgeable about Seattle but his jokes were really bad. We spent the next two hours walking around and sampling what the market has to offer. We had squares from Three Girls Bakery, tea from MarketSpice, had salmon and watched the fish being thrown at Pike Place Fish Co., peaches and mangos from Frank’s Quality Produce, clam chowder and seafood bisque from Pike Place Chowder, various cherry products from Chukar Cherries, thw worldest best Mac and Cheese from Beecher’s Handmade Cheese, beef and cheese and apple cinnamon piroshki from Piroshky Piroshky and finally crab cakes from Etta’s Seafood. At each of the stops, Brett would give us either a brief history of the vendor and/or the area where their stall is located.

After the tour ended, Karen and I headed over to Starbucks first location and picked up a couple of beverages. While on the tour, we realized there was so much more to check out but there was a store that we needed to get to before it closed. So we left the market and headed over to Tom Bihn. Tom Bihn is a Seattle manufacturer of high quality laptop bags, backpacks and other travel accessories. When I remembered that Tom Bihn was located in Seattle, it was almost mandatory to go to the factory and pick up a few things. We were there for only a short time but enough for me to get a whole bunch of stuff.

We went back to the market and spent more time exploring. We went back to some of the vendors we visited on the tour to pick up some goodies. The market is a very vibrant place to visit. You can easily spend a whole day and we practically did. The last stop before leaving was the world famous gum wall. Gum wall .. it is exactly as it sounds. It is walls in an alley that have chewed up gum applied to it. It is quite gross but also very intriguing at the same time. Karen and I each added our contribution to the wall.

We were tired from all that walking and so we went back to the car. We needed to have dinner and since we knew there was a Maggianos Little Italy in Seattle, we made our way there. We quickly got seated and were very surprised to find a new dining option. We always joke that when we go to Maggiano’s, we need to find two friends so that we can eat family style. Today we learned that they have an option for two people:  you can order two side salads, two pasta dishes to eat, two more pasta dishes to take home and dessert for only $40. We were in heaven. We have enough leftovers for dinner tomorrow. Our drive home included a quick stop at the Seattle Premium Outlets.