A week or so ago we went to Seattle to visit our friends who just had a baby. I always tell people that Seattle isn’t as rainy as they think – just a bit gray in the winter – so of course we arrived during a rare stretch of heavy rain. I guess I should say that Seattle is not always really rainy in the winter, but might sometimes be really rainy.
Between cooking dinner and meeting up with as many other friends and family as possible, we made it to most of our favorite spots in Seattle. We had dinner at Mashiko, easily the best sushi restaurant in the whole world. We had breakfast at Le Pichet on our way to go shopping at Pike Place Market. We had coffee at Caffe Ladro, maybe still my favorite coffee shop.
We tried a couple of new things thanks to friends. We had coffee at Caffe Fiore in Ballard, where the espresso is possibly as good as Caffe Ladro. After Mashiko we went to Shelter Lounge, which had great beer and bar food. We met some friends for dinner at Mission in West Seattle, which had excellent adobo pork.
We mostly just walk around Pike Place Market looking at stuff, rarely buying anything. For real shopping we head down the hill a street to World Spice Merchants, where we get spice mixes and chai. We also like The Spanish Table and their new sister store Paris Grocery.
That was about it for this trip to Seattle. I wish we’d been able to stay longer and visit with more people. It was a hard to leave, but the monsoon that greeted us on arrival did make it a little easier.