Washington Adventure Begins

I went to a wedding in Washington state with my parents. We rented a house on Whidbey Island.
Goodbye Minnesota!

I was so tired. Our flight left at 6:20am and we got up at 4am to get ready, catch the shuttle from the hotel and get to the airport early. I think tired was the theme to the vacation - I'm not good with time changes, even small ones like 2 hours. You should have seen what the time change did to me when we went to New Zealand. Really messed up.

First view of the island.

It was a rainy day. We had 2 sunny days and 5 rainy days.

We took a ferry.

When we arrived on the island it was sunny! For a while.

We drove around a bit, because we were too early and couldn't check into our house. There was someone cleaning it.

View of Penn Cove.

Our house for the week. This was when the tide was out. When the tide came in it was almost up to the grass.

This heron fished every evening near the house. There were also seals that would show up in the evening and one night there was something large that surfaced not too far from the beach. It was attached to a buoy. The buoy bounced around for a while, then went farther and farther from shore and finally disappeared.

View from the deck. I took a lot of pictures from the deck. The sky changed so much, it amazed me. The sky doesn't change that much here, or rather I can't see very much of it - too many houses in the way.

Sun set on the first night. It never looked this way again.

Escape To The Twin Cities

Last weekend I took a trip to the Cities (that's what the rest of Minnesota calls Minneapolis/St. Paul/Suburbs).

After a long winter we needed to take a Spring Escape.

We went to my favorite restaurant The Good Earth at the Galleria. Well, it was my favorite. I wasn't very impressed with the service or food. It was like eating at a Perkins.

I had a coconut/mango smoothie.

Mom and Dad

Appetizer - warm artichoke dip with jicama and pita wedges.

This was very good. The pita were warm and soft. The dip was creamy and the jicama added a nice crunch.

Mom's main dish - it was over spiced with cumin.

Dad's dish - too much 5 spice.

My meal - the nut/bean burger was undercooked and mushy. The soup was good, but I can make richer broth. Sorry Good Earth!

On our way to Minneapolis to see Macbeth at the Guthrie.

Macbeth was amazing. Although the costumes were a little distracting - 1950's military?

The next day we went to the Mall of America (MOA).

It was an interesting experience.

I met a woman who took cupcakes hostage.......

So, we went to the Williams-Sonoma store. They were doing a cake/cupcake demonstration. We watched for over 1/2 an hour. I was planning on buying some things after the demonstration, but then I met the Cupcake Nazi.

She was so mean!

See the woman on the right side in the brown shirt cutting up the GIANT cake (apparently not big enough to share). First of all, she argued with the blonde woman through the entire presentation - they couldn't agree on anything. Then she went to cut up the cake and get the cupcakes ready. We watched while at least 15 people (shoppers - not people watching the presentation - like us) came up to her and she gave them a slice of cake.

Finally, she passed out pieces of cake to all the people watching the demonstration - except us.

O-kay

Then she brought out a tray of 40 cupcakes (there were about 9 people watching the demonstration). She passed out cupcakes to everyone else and said to us, "We want to make sure everyone that signed up for the demonstration gets a cupcake first." Then she took the remaining 31 cupcakes behind the counter AND continued to hand out cake to random shoppers!!!!!!!

We left and I will NEVER, EVER buy ANYTHING from Williams-Sonoma!!!

Who keeps cupcakes hostage?!?

It's not humane!

Cupcakes are for sharing.

Period.

Also, the blonde lady kept telling people they could buy the same supplies cheaper at Ikea.

Um?

We saw Jesse Venture (our former Governor - so weird and hard to imagine that it actually happened) signing his book.

Crepes - yummy!

Dinner at Ikea. I was so tired by this time. We ran into more rude people a Ikea, but that's to be expected at Ikea - they are always rude.

I LOVE the gravy on the mashed potatoes. It's vegetarian! We bought 12 packets.

Dad watching March Madness in our hotel room.

We stayed at the Residence Inn by Marriott.

It was super nice!

Mom in our room's kitchen. It was better stocked than a lot of houses that we have rented.

Yummy cheese and cocosballs that we bought at Ikea.

Those cocosballs are so good. They have a soft marshmallow cream inside them. I would make the trip to the Cities just for them.

There was a full complimentary breakfast every morning at our hotel.

It was wonderful! Lots of choices and the staff were friendly, cheerful and helpful.

The warm buffet choices: eggs 2 ways, pancakes, croissants, hash browns, fried potatoes and some other stuff.

Other side of the buffet. You could also make a fresh waffle or have 3 choices of cereal.

The next day we went to the Science Museum in St. Paul. We saw the Dead Sea Scrolls.........and everything else!

Pretty blue sculpture.

Mom and me with the Mississippi River behind us.

Dad and Mom.

Downtown St. Paul.

Riverboat.

Mississippi River.

I thought this fish in the Mississippi River display was neat.

It's made out of junk.

It was pretty.

Loon!

The Minnesota state bird.

I'm sitting in a red blood cell chair!

Slice of the human body. This person had lung disease and plaque in their aorta.

Side way - with a huge brain aneurysm.

Dad

Dad and Mom.

I thought this was pretty.

And this was pretty too!

It's plastic "junk" glued on a wall with 4 different colored bulbs in the ceiling above the wall.

You could change the color combinations and change the shadow colors and patterens.

Home again.

With a cupcake, it would have been a perfect vacation.

Just kidding! It was a great trip!