Seattle: An Unexpected First Taste of Winter

We decided to head over to Seattle on the first weekend of November. Friends from Israel moved there for a one year sabbatical and we arranged, very last minute, to stay with them for one night. Last minute usually works perfectly for Israelis. 

We didn’t have big plans for the weekend, just some relaxing, but then another thing worked out. Our apartment was due for a floor replacement and we were told that they could do it on that weekend – perfect. On Friday night we moved all our furniture out of the living room, and on Saturday morning greeted the two guys from the flooring company and off we were on our way to the border.

It suddenly got very cold in Vancouver, but it stayed dry, so we didn’t expect to find snow on the other side of the border. We stopped in the first rest area after the border and found lots of snow to Neil’s delight – this boy sure likes snow. Then we carried along with Neil sleeping all the way to Seattle. We had lunch at Paseo, a favourite of ours, where they serve up large Cuban sandwiches, and then headed to Green Lake. We didn’t bring our bikes this time, but we brought Neil’s balance bike and he rode by the lake. We were surprised to see so many bikes around us though. It turned out that Seattle had recently adopted a bike share system where people are free to leave the bikes pretty much everywhere. It was quite a sight to see so many bikes all over. It looked great but we wondered if it was sustainable and if those bikes would survive the harsh Seattle weather.

Then we headed to our friends’ place. With three older girls, Neil had lots of fun, the royal treatment, and a bag of really soft play dough to take home. In the morning the youngest daughter (8 years old) made pancakes and everyone was curious to see if it was going to snow or not. In the end it didn’t snow much, but it was really cold. We went to our favourite part of Seattle – the Fremont neighbourhood, and Neil rode his bike by the river. Then we met up with our friends, just to discover that despite living there for a few months they had yet to go to the Theo chocolate factory and store! Of course we had to introduce them to it and the Fremont Sunday food market. The market was quite empty, probably because of the cold weather. It was hard to believe that just the weekend before we were sun tanning on the top of Mt. Seymour.

Then it was time to hit the road again and Neil fell asleep easily and was not so happy about our stop at REI in Bellingham. To cheer him up we said he could ride the pedal bike there like he’s does at MEC in Vancouver, but due to ‘liability’ they took the bike from him after a short time, which of course led to a total meltdown. We ended up not buying anything… Next stop was of course Trader Joe’s, but at the border they took away the rum bottle that we bought, since we weren’t away for 48 hours, what a waste.

Our mood was cheered up immediately when opened our door and saw the beautiful new floor we now have. It was a great weekend of catching up with friends we haven’t seen in a long time, visiting favourite places in Seattle and getting a new floor for our apartment. It was a win-win all around!