Mr. & Mrs. Vandebilt + kids

We left ourselves a few days in Seattle before we would board our cruise ship to Alaska. After a pretty rough few days of a lot of puking and a lot of moving, it was really nice to be able to spread out in a four bedroom place and get some space and rest. We booked a place in West Seattle, not because we knew anything about the area, but because it had four bedrooms, allowed pets and wasn’t a thousand dollars a night.

We ended up being right next to the entrance to a local park that after you walked through it you ended up on the beach. I thought I had had my fill of magical rain forests, but because this was almost hidden in plain sight, it seemed even more magical. The entrance was less than a 5 minute walk from our front doorstep and then all of a sudden you might as well have been in the middle of a thousand acre forest. You could no longer hear any traffic, you couldn’t see the city, it was awesome.

We ended up walking through the park two different days, it was so nice. We weren’t entirely prepared the first time and it started to rain so after we grabbed a quick coffee and donuts we headed back. The second time the weather was much more cooperative and we were able to sit out and enjoy a couple of beers on the patio while the kids played on the beach across the street. Jacob struck up a conversation with the bartender over his love of Dallas Green and Matty Matheson and ended up scoring free beers for the road.

We did manage to leave West Seattle for one afternoon and head into downtown proper. We visited Pike Place Market (no we didn’t see any fish being thrown) the original Starbucks (no we didn’t wait an hour for a latte that we could get around the corner at a new Starbucks) and found the gum wall(yes, it is disgusting). We eventually made our way down to the waterfront and wandered around for awhile before we headed back to the van just in time to miss the rain.

I was so impressed with Seattle. It was super clean, the parks were great, it’s always nice to be on the water and the weather was lovely.