Seattle, Washington, October 2022
It’s been a minute, hasn’t it? Between my new job that I started back in August ‘21 and my divorce in December of the same year, I didn’t really have it in me to do a lot of traveling…let alone to write about it, but as the old adage goes, “time heals all wounds,” and it’s time to get back on the saddle and get back to doing the things I love.
In March ‘22, I began dating Melissa and we’ve been going pretty steady since then. With my birthday being October 3rd, Melissa suggested we go somewhere neither of us had been to yet: Seattle.
Seattle skyline as seen from the Seattle Great Wheel
That’s right, after living in the Pacific Northwest for over three years, I had yet to visit the Emerald City and my birthday celebration was the perfect excuse to take a long weekend and get out of Eugene.
We left Eugene in the mid-morning on Saturday, timing it so our four-and-a-half hour drive had us pulling up to our hotel in the Belltown district just before check-in time.
After spending some time freshening up and ogling at our impressive Urban Suite at the Staypineapple Hotel Five, we made our way to the Pike Place Market, conveniently located a short ten-minute walk from our hotel.
Opening in 1907, the Pike Place Market is one of the oldest continuously running farmer’s markets in the United States and with over 10 million visitors a year it is one of the top fifty most visited tourist attractions in the world.
The market’s reputation as a top tourist destination was on full display on that Saturday afternoon with people quite literally walking shoulder to shoulder through the various stands of produce, fish, cheeses, meats, and much more. The fact I didn’t catch COVID is nothing short of a miracle.
We stopped at the legendary Pike Place Fish Market, known for its lively atmosphere, complete with whole fish being literally thrown around by the fish mongers working there.
From there, we left through the rear of the market, down to the waterfront where we went on a quest to ride the Seattle Great Wheel on Pier 57.
The pier has a seemingly out of place Old West mining town theme. The “Miner’s Landing” theme makes a lot more sense once you learn that, during the Klondike Gold Rush in Alaska during the last 1890s, Seattle was one of the main points of departure for people trying to get to Alaska in order to make their fortune.
The Seattle Great Wheel stands at a height of 175 feet (53.3 meters), making it the tallest Ferris wheel on the west coast of the United States and among one of the tallest in the world.
Tickets to ride the wheel ran us $17 each. For the cost, riders go on a 12-minute ride going around three times, getting incredible views of both the Seattle skyline and of Puget Sound. The gondolas that one rides in are climate controlled but unfortunately air conditioning vents inside are not powerful enough to really counteract the fact that you’re sitting in a sealed glass box, the sun’s rays turning the gondola into a greenhouse.
Despite the slight discomfort, the views were absolutely amazing and the wheel rotates at a slow-enough speed that you have plenty of time to take all the pictures your heart desires.
After getting off the wheel, we made our way back to the Pike Place Market to get a bite to eat as neither of us had really eaten except for some fries from McDonald’s on the drive up.
Shops at the market shut down pretty early with most places, including most of the restaurants, closing around 4 PM. One of the few places still open was Beecher’s Handmade Cheese, best known for their “World’s Best” Mac & Cheese. A bold claim like that meant I knew I had to see if they could back it up and back it up they did.
Although they used penne pasta instead of macaroni (meaning it’s not really mac & cheese if you wanna be an asshole about it), the cheese sauce itself was creamy with just the right amount of savory and the pasta itself was cooked just past al dente, meaning it wasn’t mushy but essentially melted in your mouth as it combined with the cheese sauce.
We took the mac and cheese to go and ate it as we walked back to our hotel where we rested, showered, and eventually got dressed to the nines to go out to dinner.
We originally wanted to eat at The Pink Door, a restaurant known for its Saturday night burlesque shows. Unfortunately, due to the restaurant's popularity there was no way to get a table that night.
After quickly looking to what what else was in the area on Google Maps, we found Le Pichet, a cute little French bistro located only a few blocks away.
We took a seat at the bar and ordered ourselves some drinks and a charcuterie board to start us off. The vibe inside the restaurant reminded me of my days working at Bistro du Midi back in Boston, the French fine dining restaurant that gave me my first Sous Chef job.
There’s something wonderfully communal about sitting at a bar. People are free to comingle and join other’s conversations without feeling weird about it. As very extroverted people, Melissa and I had an amazing time shooting the breeze with those around us and enjoyed an incredible meal of steak-frites, pan roasted salmon, and topped off with a delicious chocolate mousse.
Knowing we had a long day planned the following day, after dinner we called it a night and went back to the hotel to get some sleep.
The next morning we had little time to sleep in. As I’ve mentioned before on this blog, I’m a huge aviation nerd, hell, I even have an entire section of this blog dedicated to talking about planes and aviation, so it was a no-brainer that on my birthday trip to Seattle, we had to go to the Boeing plant located in Everett, about a half hour drive north of Seattle.
Massive scale model of the new Boeing 777X, set for its first delivery sometime in 2025. This thing was longer than I am tall.
Since COVID lockdowns started, Boeing has yet to reopen its factory floor for in-person tours but thankfully Melissa bought us tickets to the Backstage Pass exhibit which is little more than a guided, hour-long presentation about the history of Boeing and the creation of the plant as well as the widebody aircraft produced there.
The exhibit houses the vertical stabilizer from a 747-8 Jumbo Jet, the latest iteration of the 747 family. To show you just how massive this thing is, I am standing in front of it for scale (I’m 6’4 or 193 cm tall).
The last 747 to ever be produced just rolled off the production line in early October.
The presentation was informative and surprisingly led by a higher up at the company with some official title I couldn’t possibly remember if my life depended on it.
After the presentation ended there was a brief Q&A before we were allowed to visit the Future of Flight gallery located in the main concourse of the building.
This was the kind of shit I wanted to see and I felt like a kid in a candy store as I got to check out a variety of exhibitions highlighting Boeing’s past, present, and future.
Some of the exhibits included an area where you could fly a drone, a simulator that allowed you to design and fly your own jet aircraft, among several others showcasing Boeing’s plans for the future of commercial aviation as well as space exploration.
To finish our morning, we took the elevator to the Boeing Sky Deck, an observation platform that allows visitors to look across the runway to the Boeing plant, surrounded by planes being finalized for delivery to the airlines or cargo companies that ordered them.
Among a variety of planes adorned with liveries from airlines around the world, two planes stood out to me: First was Boeing’s new tanker plane designed for the US Air Force. Having been developed off of the base design of its 767 family of aircraft, the KC-46 is meant to replace the aging KC-135 fueling tanker also developed by Boeing based off of their old 707 jetliner.
The second plane to catch my eye, parked just behind the KC-46 was the 747-400LCF (Large Cargo Freighter), or as it’s also known: The Dreamlifter. Boeing created four of these heavily modified 747 Jumbo jets in order to transport the completed composite fuselages of Boeing’s latest family of planes, the 787 Dreamliner.
We wrapped up our tour and decided to get back to the city to do a few more things we wanted to do while in Seattle. On the drive back to the hotel, Melissa told me we had to be back to the hotel that evening at 5:30 to get ready for a big surprise she had for me.
We left the car in the parking lot of the hotel and walked in the direction of the Space Needle to go to the Chihuly Garden and Glass, an exhibit displaying the work of local Seattle studio glass artist Dale Chihuly. The pieces inside were incredible and as someone that had never been immersed into the world of “studio glass,” I learned that you could do things I never thought were possible to create with glass. Massive, beautiful, intricate pieces incorporating multiple different techniques of blowing.
The gallery wasn’t particularly large and we were able to see the entire exhibition in about an hour before heading just down the street to the Museum of Pop Culture (or MoPOP), known for its famous exhibits on Sci-Fi, horror, and fantasy films, music, and the arts.
The museum was unlike any museum I had seen before, highlighting the arts in mediums that are not usually on display: celluloid, polyurethane, fiberglass, and several others.
After finishing our visit to MoPOP, we surprisingly still had a good amount of time before we’d need to be back at the hotel. Although we were going to save a trip up the Space Needle for just before our departure out of Seattle, with the amount of time we still had left in the day, we opted for a late afternoon excursion to the top of the iconic Seattle landmark.
The tickets to the top ran us $35 each which literally only paid for the elevator ride to the slowly spinning observation deck at the top of the tower, 500 feet above the city.
The view from the top was stellar but in addition to the sights, the interior of the building is adorned with informative displays about the design, development, and construction of the Space Needle for the 1962 World’s Fair.
The time was quickly approaching for us to have to get back to the hotel in order to get ready for Melissa’s surprise after she spent all afternoon giving me mixed signals as to what it may be in order to throw me off.
The real reason for this trip was finally about to be revealed. After pondering all day about what Melissa’s surprise could be, I couldn’t land on anything with any real level of certainty.
Part of me thought, “Are we going to the movies? She knows how much I love going to the movies…but why would we go to the movies in Seattle when we could do that in Eugene?” Another part of me thought she’d take me to a strip club as a gag. Whatever it was, I was about to find out.
Melissa got us an uber from the hotel, asking that I close my eyes during the trip, which was disappointing since our uber was a really nice Tesla.
We finally pulled up to the Climate Pledge Arena, home of the NHL’s newest expansion team, the Seattle Kraken. “Oh god…are we going to a hocket game? Oh no, does she think I like hockey because I casually talked about it a few weeks ago? Oh god…don’t seem ungrateful, you dick.”
It wasn’t until we got to the security check that I saw the banner for what we were there for: the motherfucking BLACK KEYS.
I don’t think I have ever specified this in any of my posts, but the Black Keys are my favorite band. I am not exaggerating when I tell you I almost cried. This was without a doubt, not only the best birthday surprise I had received, but easily one of the most thoughtful.
We eventually found ourselves near a Jack Daniel's Whiskey themed bar within the arena. From there, Melissa and I made our way down to the floor section, walking right past security like we knew exactly where we were going and successfully snuck our way in.
The show was absolutely incredible. As part of their Dropout Boogie tour, they played a few songs from their new album by the same name as well as most of their greatest hits including Gold on the Ceiling, Howlin’ For You, Fever, and many more. Easily, the best part of the night however was the encore when they played my favorite song of theirs, Little Black Submarines.
There was something incredibly beautiful seeing the sea of lights from people’s phones (because who carries a lighter anymore) as everyone followed along with Auerbach’s acoustic guitar during the first few verses.
The Black Keys concluded their encore with another one of there biggest singles Lonely Boy before finally calling it a night.
I honestly don’t have the proper words to describe just how I felt that night. I got to see one of my favorite bands live for the first time, but the thing that made it that much more meaningful was the level of care that Melissa had put into this gift, managing to keep it a secret for weeks which is something I personally do not have the ability to do.
Snagged this picture from our seats with my phone. Absolutely unreal how good the camera’s have gotten on these things
