Day 19: Quacks, Star Wars, and Mystery Food

When we arrived in Seattle, I thought, “Ah, Seattle gets such a bad rap! The weather is beautiful! There’s not a cloud in the sky!”

Then the second hand on the clock moved forward a tick, the clouds raced in, temperatures dropped, and I was all like, “….oh.”

Ah, Seattle, you dreary city you.

I can’t knock it too much, though. Actually, I can. Seattle, you’re dreary and you are one ginormous construction zone. It should have taken us 10 minutes to walk from our hotel to Seattle Center; it took a good half an hour. When Earl is whining that she’s tired before you’ve so much as seen a street vendor, you know it’s bad.

Seattle Center is one of those really cool areas of town where you find artists and parks and shops and cafes and Jedis and playgrounds and anything else your heart desires. It is not, however, magical, and it still took eons of aimless walking and you-pick-no-you-pick bickering over where to find lunch. We settled on Collections Cafe.

Because you can never go wrong with a restaurant with dozens of accordions suspended from the ceiling.

I’d booked us onto a tour of the city after lunch, but we had a few minutes to kill. It didn’t take long for Earl to spot the enormous playground teeming with screaming, but well-behaved, children of all ages. She was bouncing from the moment she spied it, and when she asked, “Can I go?” El Jefe and I could hear the joy about to bubble over. We barely nodded, and she was off.

It’s an amazing space for kids of all ages. That climbing structure, though—El Jefe turned to me after a few minutes and asked, “Am I the only one feeling a little ‘Lord of the Flies’ here?”

Perhaps. Or perhaps not. The pictures do not do justice to the sheer number of arms and legs and heads and elbows and knees freely flailing every which way. Everywhere.

Earl made it down the big slide once before we had to pry her away to head across the street to catch our bus…er…boat…er…quack?

It’s a duck tour! It’s a bus! It’s a boat! It’s a vehicle with a 70 year old suspension!

And we all got quacking noise makers! And I chose the wrong seats so El Jefe was smooshed and unable to see behind the driver! And Earl and I had a great view of the dash! Hooray!

That makes it sound like we didn’t have a good time. We did, some more than others—I tried to get El Jefe to switch seats with me, but nooooo, he had to be all gentlemanly and suffer in the name of giving me the better (snort) view.

Graham Quacker was our tour guide with his endless supply of hats and corny tour guide jokes. He played music and plied us with knowledge and cheese (not the edible kind, sadly) and encouraged us to have the most fun possible. After all, we were in a bus that would later drive us into the lake on purpose. How cool is that??

I’m coming to learn (veeeerrrrry slooooowllyyyyy—we’ve only been married a dozen years) that El Jefe has a much quieter, less expressive kind of fun than Earl and I, and I have to continually work to accept that. After all, sometimes it’s very difficult to discern if someone is having a good time if they don’t particularly look like it. But I was proud of myself: I asked him once if he was okay, he assured me he was, and that was that. I didn’t fuss about him just sitting there when everybody else on the bus was mimicking General Quacker’s duck bus choreography to “Stayin’ Alive.” I simply had fun on my own and didn’t worry about him. See? I’m growing on this trip!

Personal growth aside, my chest crap, despite all the Coldeeze and Good Samaritan I could dissolve or inhale, was setting in heavier with each breath. Something about not being able to breathe affecting the brain’s ability to remember stuff…that’s my excuse for forgetting to charge the camera batteries and letting my iPhone battery get so low. So there aren’t many pics of our tour ’round Seattle. But there’s this one that made me laugh:

Because when every road in the stinkin’ city is under construction, sometimes important things are easy to misplace.

That is the hammering man. I think he has another name, but he hammers all the time. He’s always hammered. Graham Quacker hammered us with bad hammer puns.

And that’s the view out the front of our bus…boat…er…quack? Seattle as seen from Lake Union.

El Jefe, Earl, and I had each been spying this building near the Space Needle off-and-on all afternoon. On the tour, we’d learned that the odd structure is the home to the EMP Museum designed to highlight Music, Sci-Fi, and Pop Culture. Dude, that is so right up our alleys, so as soon as we were off the bus, we knew where we were headed.

Did I mention the Star Wars Costume Exhibit was there?

The top floor of EMP is chock-full of booths where you can learn to play instruments, complete challenges, work on vocals, and even record your own songs from the ground up. It’s an amazing experience, and Earl had far too much fun recording her very own masterpiece (which she won’t let me listen to yet).

Currently, the sound experience shares the top floor with a really cool exhibit on Chuck Jones and his animation. Here’s Earl doing her best horizontal (this blog format ain’t perfect, as much as I love it) Wile E. Coyote impression.

There was an Art of Gaming exhibit set up, too. And how on earth do you have an exhibit on gaming without oodles of consoles for people to play? Hog heaven for a certain 9-year-old.

Despite the hour or so that I completely lost Earl and El Jefe (who were together. in the gaming room. where i’d left them. unawares. and didn’t realize it until i had power walked all three floors of the museum in a frantic search because omg where did they go????), EMP was massive fun for all.

We capped the evening off with dinner at this little place right on Lake Union. My phone and camera were both dead, so there is no photographic evidence of the adventure, but it is absolutely worth mentioning, because it was a meal unlike anything I have ever had.

Pasta Freska was a recommendation from the girl behind the desk when we checked into our hotel. She told me then that if we wanted Italian and didn’t mind an unusual dining experience, it was a must visit.

Boy, was she right. On so many levels.

When you walk into Pasta Freska and sit down, you don’t get menus; you get owner and chef Mike at your table asking if there’s anything you absolutely won’t or cannot eat. Now, I consider myself a picky eater, but curiosity killed the cat and, minus those few years in the nineties and naughts when citric acid was my kryptonite, I’m allergy free.

I’m not sure whether it was a touch of hubris on our parts or just Mike’s effusive personality that caused all three of us to leave all of the options open. Bring it on.

With a smile and a whirl, Mike was gone and food started appearing. Seven perfectly-sized courses in all, most of which I still couldn’t tell you what they were. The menu at Pasta Freska is all chef’s choice, and it’s not necessarily explained as it’s placed in front of you. I know we started off with what was possibly eggplant, then there was an egg roll kind of ravioli dumpling thing, a plate of penne with homemade marinara-esque sauce, a plate of mussels and shrimp, a serving of salmon, a small portion of steak, and one other course that I have no memory of whatsoever because by then it was getting late and we were just so full.

Every last bite was delectable, though, even when we couldn’t identify it. Even Earl tried some stuff she’d never tried before and liked it!

As stuffed and satisfied as we were, there was no turning down dessert. Flan, cheesecake, chocolate cake, and two scoops of ice cream. Holy. Moly.

It was all good enough that just the thought of it is sending me back into a food coma. Seriously. If you don’t remember another word about our time in Seattle remember this:

PASTA FRESKA.

GO.