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January 14, 2005
We do more by 10am... (Part One of Three)
Vince, Donna & Ari flew in Thursday night to visit - and to surprise Dawnise for her birthday on Friday. Unbeknownst to Dawnise, they had taken a room in the Inn At the Harbor Steps, conveniently located in our apartment building. I took the day off under false pretense - despite Dawnise's repeated insistence that I should just go in late.
Friday morning, we went down to the lobby to head to the Crumpet Shop for breakfast - where Vince was playing the part of the spy, sitting on a sofa in the lobby (in)conspicuously reading the paper, and Donna and Ari were sitting on another sofa, primed to jump Dawnise.
Dawnise very nearly missed all three of them in her rush out the door. I had to pull her back in to give them time to spring the trap.
Vince tried to take some pictures of the joyous reunion - I think all he ended up with were blurry shots of backs - alternating between Dawnise and Ari as they spun 'round.
We went down to the Crumpet Shop and had breakfast - not exactly what our visitors were expecting for breakfast, I suspect - the menu is rather more limited than a traditional American breakfast restaurant (we have Crumpets, Tea, Groats, and... well, we have Crumpets, Tea, and Groats!).
From breakfast we walked through Pikes Place Market, which was fairly empty it being a weekday, and decided to head to the Seattle Aquarium, a few blocks down on the water-front. The Aquarium is very cool - lots of hands-on exhibits (boy the water in the tide-pools is cold) and some absolutely beautiful sea-life. We spent several hours wandering around - got to see an octopus consume a whole crab, and Ari got to feed some of the denizens of the tide-pools.
From the Aquarium we decided to keep up the educational theme, and walked up to the monorail station for the quick trip to Seattle Center and the Pacific Science Center. We checked out the exhibits, including a leisurely walk through the butterfly house (though no repeats of the close-encounters had on the last trip). Took the monorail back down town, and on the way back made a detour for Dawnise to show us some nifty shoes she'd been admiring. Only their lack of wide sizes kept us from leaving with them, but shoeless (well, aside from the ones we came in with, anyway) we left the store and went back to the house to change.
We went to dinner at Ray's Boathouse - eating in the more formal downstairs restaurant. The food and service were excellent - a very nice meal topped off with desert and a flight of ice wines.
We retired to the building, going to our respective rooms to get changed into more comfortable clothes, and joined our visitors in their hotel room for some games and conversation.
It was a great day - I haven't seen Dawnise smile that much for a long, long time.
Posted by dberger at January 14, 2005 8:33 PM