We had the morning and early afternoon before we were meeting our friends so we decided to head downtown and hit a few spots. We stopped at Pike Place Market first and checked out all of the vendors there. There was art, flowers, food, fish, crafts...basically anything you can sell from a stand. We did end up picking up a nice small piece of art before heading over to the Seattle Art Museum. It was very busy though since this is peak tourist season and we wanted to get away from there before it got even worse.
The museum itself was huge and had a lot of different things from modern art to silver and furniture. No one area had that much by itself but it definitely had a large variety. I admit a lot of the modern stuff is not my cup of tea but some things like the porcelain rooms - with the teacups - were at least somewhat interesting.
After a decent lunch at a brewpub near the market, we walked around a little more before heading back to the hotel to kill an hour or so before heading to Mark and Laurel's house to see them and meet their baby!
I've worked with Mark since 2006 and his wife Laurel also worked at the same company. They moved to Seattle and had a baby last year so this was our first time meeting her. She was great the entire evening - nothing but smiles and laughs. She just learned to crawl too so I think she was happy to show off her new skills.
They made us dinner - pizza (they know my eating habits) and salad - and after a delightful time there, we headed back to our hotel since we had an early morning on Thursday.
As they say in the tourist areas, "That'll be $20 for a hamburger." Note: They do say this.
