Friday, July 16, 2010

Pikes Place Market




What an incredible marketplace! If you have never been to Pikes Place Market, you really need to come and share the experience with us! We had a great time. There are fresh fruits, fresh fish, fresh breads, fresh vegetables, home made candy, fresh flowers, anything fresh you can imagine is everywhere. It was fun to see the people come in off of the cruise ships and purchase flowers for thier ship cabins. The flower stalls would make up hundreds of gorgeous bouquets, wrap them in brown paper and sell them for $5, $10, $15. We would pay $45-$50 for this kind of bouquet. The flowers were glorious. Stephen said that these flowers look as pretty as the flowers in the "seed catalogues" that come in December! (ha, that is a reference to his last sermon for anyone who was at church last Sunday)



We had heard that the number 1 thing to do in Seattle Washington is to go on one of the Seattle Food Tours. We didnt think that Mom Beutler could handle a 2 hour walking tour, so we found out where the Seattle Food tours take the people and what they eat and we began our own Food tour! What an incredible experience. We started out with cheese curds from Beecher Cheeses and then ate the most incredible beef and cheese Perogshis, fresh cherries, fresh apricots, fresh pears and nectarines; on to fresh clam chowder that was out of this world! We ate potstickers from Mum Shu Chineese restaurant and bought a bag full of mini donuts to share! We found carmelized orange cinnamon almonds! We watched the fresh fish markets throw fresh fish across the market to each other. All of a sudden some man would begin singing "a bag of mussles"....and the entire bag of mussels would be hurled across the stalls. Then a song would begin "a big fresh halibut is flying through the air" and there would go the fresh halibut! Very, very entertaining that's for sure.


After we left the Pikes Place Market we headed for Pioneer village which is the old Klondike gold Mining town about 1890's. This area of the city was filled with majestic Romanesque architecture and laden with history. You could imagine the Saloons, brothels, old west shoot outs and fine ladies dressed in beautiful clothing adorning the streets. This section of town was a mixture of "class" and "no class". Beautiful iron gates and fences, lovely flowers, ancient trees, and Totem Poles. We are seeing totem poles everywhere we go. I'm not sure about the tribe of Indians that live here, we have run across 5-6 tribes already.


We became tired of Seattle City Life, so Steve loaded us all in the car and we headed for the closest mountain that we could see off in the distance. Mt Rainier was an incredible mountain. Here are all of these mountains all over the landscape and then there is Mt Rainier. The normal mountains were about 10,000 feet above sea level and Mt Rainier was 20,000 feet. It stood head and shoulders above the rest of the mountains in the area. It is magnificent. We drove around Mt Rainier National Park and snapped about 200 pictures on Mt Rainier alone.

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