Vancouver Follies - chapter 1b: cinnamon pieces of heaven...

the plane ride to Seattle from SJ was only 1.5 hours (flightcrew singsong time included), but there was only 1 person working at Alamo, so it took another hour before we picked up the rental car...

having been to Seattle/Vancouver before, i was unofficially the map-looking-navigator. it was decided that we go to Pike Place to eat, then Space Needle because that's the famous tourist spot of Seattle.
Pike Place is like Atwater market - kinda a cross between your fresh produce market and a seafood-oriented farmers market inside a building by the piers. It is also where a lot of the seafood vendors throw around whole big 12-lb salmon fish to each other and put on a show to display their fresh seafood for sale. Of course none of the signs had the price, causing one to think just how expensive it'd be. But the lobster tails are HUGE (measure against the forearm of the man in the picture, the tails are still bigger) we had clam chowder at the kiosk in Pike Place, it was good and we were hungry.

then i noticed this HEAVENLY scent; and followed it to this donut place, where mini-size donuts rolled right off a little machine into the plate, and the vendors bag the donuts into a paperbag, add some cinnamon sugar and shake it up. They are warm, fluffy, cinnamon-y and surprisingly not overly-sweet. it's a little bit of heaven in my mouth - yum yum

we made our way to Seattle Space Needle. Mind you i've been to Seattle twice before but no one i'd travelled with had an urge to go - neither did i, but i figured whatever, i'm along for the ride. the ticket was $14 to go up, it's about 40 floors high, and let me tell you the view wasn't spectacular, the walkway wasn't spectacular, and i can get much better view from a skyscraper, any skyscraper, for free...

scratch that off the list, i shall never visit the Space Needle again, at least now i won't be curious about it.

after that we took Hwy 5 north towards Vancouver. even at 3pm on a thursday afternoon we got stuck in an extra hour of traffic. we arrived into Richmond, BC with the slight drizzle welcoming us...