Cities started to fly by fast! Darren and I had been use to miles and miles of driving before a city came up but before we knew it we had flown past Bellingham and were within 30 minutes of Seattle. The sun was setting fast and we hadn't slept in a bed for about 5 days. Which.. wasn't all that bad but more than anything we craved showers. We were on a budget and quickly found out that small budgets and Seattle do not mix. We also found out that Motel 6 was booked for the most part.
The only room we could find was one down at the Seattle SeaTac location. We took the room, and the nightmare began. The floors were filthy. You could almost see the germs moving on the floor. We didn't dare take our shoes off. There were two beds in the room. I pulled back the sheets on each of them. One bed appeared to have the old sheets still on. They were all crinkly like someone had already slept in them. Gross! The other bed looked untouched. Next we went to look at the shower and realized the shower bar was about to fall out of the wall. It was getting worse and worse the more we looked around. The truck started to sound so good to sleep in again.
As it started to get dark the parking lot filled up. Scary people showed up. Two hundred dollar ghetto cruisers pulled in with stereos pounding. People were yelling in the parking lot and we realized we were the only white folks there. The stares came at us like as though we were fresh meat and we met their hard stares with our own crazy white people stares. The dog didn't like anyone. I went to lock our hotel room door up real good and realized the door had previously been kicked in and the lock and handle provided little to no security.
That was it...Darren went to see if they had a different room. They did. One room. A smoking room. Around the corner. That one was just as dirty, down a dark hallway and the smell of cigarettes was overpowering. We kept the room we had. We knew there weren't any other rooms available and no other hotels we could afford. We parked in the handicap stall right at our door and hoped we didn't get a ticket for it. We debated where would be best for Kenai to sleep. The truck or the room. We voted for the room and figured she'd bark if she heard someone messing with our truck right outside the door. She stirred in the night but never freaked out. The sleep wasn't good and the shower we had been craving didn't turn out as soothing as we had thought due to the worry that we may be getting diseased feet by standing in the tub. We had hoped for a nice dinner too but nobody would deliver and we didn't want to leave the full parking lot and loose our parking spot at our door. So I got the laptop out and searched for amazing breakfast places in Seattle. We found several raving reviews for a place called Peso's Kitchen and Lounge. So we went to bed and dreamed of food.
The next morning, the parking lot was quiet. You wouldn't know how bad it was in the parking lot the night before. The place looked semi pleasant in the morning light. We loaded up and headed for the breakfast place called Peso's.
Peso's is located at 605 Queen Anne Ave in Seattle. Parking is a little tough so we parked around the block and walked a little ways. The decor is awesome! The colors, the lights, the wrought iron just really made this place awesome. I could see how at night this would be a huge hot spot and it looked like fun. I ordered the eggs benedict, Darren got something else..huevos ranchos I think. Let me tell you.... the BEST eggs benedict ever! Delicious! and CHEAP! It was like $8 and awesome. The service was good too. We will be going back! Here's a link to their restaurant: http://www.pesoskitchen.com/
After breakfast we went to the Pike Market. I'd seen this on Real World MTV when I was about 16 and I'd heard neat things about it so I made a point of making sure we checked it out. Parking was ridiculous! Seattle is a walking city. Not a driving city. Least in this part of it. The streets are surprisingly steep too. We ended up parking in a parking garage that charged something like $12 per hour. Plus the stalls were so tiny we had to take up two therefore it doubled the rate! It took about 10 minutes just to walk to the market so we had to shop fast.
I bought a couple handmade journals from a vendor and some beautiful fresh sweet peaches from a local farmer. Delicious! We looked for the infamous fish throwing but found out after talking to the journal guy that PETA had been down at the fish market protesting the fish throwing saying it was inhumane to throw the dead fish and that it was disrespectful. Crazy. So the fish market had put a hold on throwing fish.
After Pike Market we went to the Chinese Museum of Ancient Art or something like that. It was a hot day in Seattle, 90 degrees so the art museum was closing soon due to the heat and lack of air conditioning so we quickly walked through. It was free so that was nice too. It was interesting. The part that amazed me was the little bottles that were hand painted... on the INSIDE. The artists had used funny little brushes to reach down inside the little bottles and had painted beautiful detailed scenes. Really cool.
After we did all of that...the day was moving on and we needed to get back on the road. We were headed South from here and tying into the infamous Highway 101 that goes down the West Coast.
Thanks for reading.
Hailey Rose
