Summer Vacation

All right- so the vacation

Seattle- you can tell there's lots of tech money in the area, as Frank put it "lots of chicks that rate an 8 or a 9 walking around with guys who rate a 3 or a 4" and the good looking guys were gay.- We went out for sushi with Adam. Went down to Pike Street market (watched the fish throwing), ate street food, and went to a Sox game- one they actually won! Drank a LOT. A city with a very high opinion of itself. Never have I seen so many dietary specialty items for regular purchase- it seemed like everything was "Gluten Free, Vegan, Soy Free and Tree Nut Free."

Train from Seattle to Portland- 3 hours. I was motion sick for most of it. Highlight was watching the couple on the other side of the aisle proceed to get wasted drinking Dewars and Root Beer- from a vintage suitcase they had turned into a portable bar. The girl of the couple wound up yelling at some chick who kept getting on her phone and whining to her parents, yelled something along the lines of "Can't you fucking read? There's no cell phone use in here." She was a sloshy mess when she yelled, so it was awesome.

Portland- Grittier than Seattle. Like if you took Providence RI and Fall River MA and squished them together to make one city. Industrial, lots of bridges. Good food scene. I could live there. There's a hippie vibe that was absent from both Seattle and San Francisco. A grid city, which was comforting.

Oregon Coast- gorgeous! Seriously the most breathtaking scenery I've ever seen. Pine rain forests with virgin growth pine trees that are 400+ years old and 50+ feet tall. The waves were crazy, and that's apparently just how they are. We went to Astoria so Frank could see the Goonies house (on his bucket list). We bought a $1 CD tour and listened to it for hours (because we couldn't get any radio station that was worth listening to in the rental). This is also when I figured out that Frank was totally lying to me about how long the damn drive would be from Portland to San Francisco- he totally undersold it to me by 300 miles. Also went to Tillamook for the tour- stupid except for the all-you-can-eat cheese samples.

Drive from Portland to Davis CA (home of UC Davis)- I gave up. We made it to an hour from Napa when he started to fall asleep at the wheel. Did our laundry- college towns are good for something. Had beer and pizza in a bar, left for Napa early. Long ass drive. Like 10 hours of boring. Mt Shasta has snow on it year round was about the only thing I found interesting.

Napa- Yeah, touristy in places. Gotta pick the good wineries, even if they charge more for a tasting, because the wines are hard to find out of state. We did Grigich Hills and Keenan wineries. Grigich poured us a glass of dessert wine that retails for $85 for a split (the small bottle 2.5 glasses), as part of our $20 per person tour- on top of the other 5 wines we were poured. Good value for the money. Driving through the town itself sucks- so do it once and be done- pick out your wineries so you move out from the center of town against the traffic.

San Francisco- By this time I was just exhausted. We did the piers, saw the sea lions, went to the chocolate factory, rode the cable car, walked through Chinatown, and everything. As a result, instead of getting up early on Saturday to spend a few extra hours in the city, we slept through our wake up, and didn't get to go back downtown. Flew out of SFO, and got home to a cat who missed us greatly.

This was probably the last of our expensive "just us" vacations for a few years. We have to go to Disney next year for sure (Land, not World), and we want to do an Alaska cruise, but we'll take the kids on that. That will fill up our next few years.