Seattle, Day 11

This is Lucy. Love, love, love this dog. Isn't she the cutest thing ever?

Slept in. Lounged with our friends' puppies, Lucy and Gibson. Got a little work done. Found a beautiful purple ruffly silk dress for the wedding I'm attending next week (and how fun to get to shop with my fabulously stylish friend!) Had Mexican food and margaritas at Mama's...yum. Viewed another epic slide show back at our friends' house (yesterday was our most recent vacation and their recent trip to Europe, today the vacation/wedding trip of mutual friends of ours).

We are having the best time...don't want it to end...

XO

Seattle, Day 10

Lake Washington, near Seward Park, looking down from the picnic table where we had our BBQ.

Back to Seattle for the last few days of our trip. Staying with my best friend and her husband, and we had the most amazing day yesterday. Brunch. A walk in the arboretum. Nice warm weather and a BBQ at the lake. Heaven. 

Seattle, Day 5...And I Feel Such a Connection to This City

I love the Seattle library so much we had to go walk around in it. Here's a view of downtown looking out from some of the library's diamond-shaped windows...

Ah, Seattle. It's really unfair for me to show up here on a brilliantly sunny day in June, stay on Alki Beach, not have to work, and feel like this is a typical day in the city, but there it is.

I have such a love for Seattle, and a long history here:

• My father grew up here, and his family's been here for multiple generations. When I was little, every summer I would come visit my grandparents, who lived outside the city, but I always flew into Sea Tac and spent time in the city. What I remember most is the soft humidness of the air, the smell of saltwater, the screetch of the seagulls...
• I lived here a summer in college, with my grandparents in the Queen Anne neighborhood
• Right after college I moved here, lived here for a year and a half, worked my first job here, made some amazing friends, had the first serious love of my life...just generally had an absolute blast being young, feeling like absolutely everything was ahead of me (which it was)
• Fast-forward a number of years...my husband was working in Alaska when I met him, but returned to Seattle shortly thereafter. We did long-distance between Seattle and Santa Barbara, and it was in this city we fell in love
• And then I moved here to be with him...that's how I left California...but that move was short-lived as I was heartbroken over my brother dying and having to leave the house where my brother and I had lived together in California...and I came from sunny Southern California in January and it was too much of a shock to go from there to the dark and gray when I was already so incredibly sad. Six months later, we moved to Colorado to be closer to my family and that was absolutely the right decision, although lately both my husband and I have been really missing Seattle...

It feels so good to be here...for my husband too. Yesterday was such a great day of sitting on the sand on the beach, taking the water taxi from West Seattle to downtown, wandering around downtown taking pictures and girly shopping (Anthropologie, Lush, Fireworks, Twist...there's no shopping where I live...got to get my fix while I'm traveling). And then we went over to Queen Anne where we used to live together and had dinner at Pesos, which is one of my favorite restaurants in the world...their carne asada is to die for. Yesterday was the solstice, too, and it's cool to be here for the solstice...it got light about 4 AM in the morning and there was still light in the sky at 10 PM.

Loving being in Seattle...

XO