Bumpy flight
The seat belt sign stayed on for more than 1 hour of the 2 ½ hour flight from Palm Springs to Seattle. I can’t believe that it no longer concerns me when we bump around at 35,000 ft, when I used to need several drinks just to climb aboard a plane.
Apart from the turbulence everything else about the journey was fine. We landed at Seattle and Alex sorted out an Uber for all six of us and our luggage which arrived at gate 16 all very promptly. Basically when we arrived at 8th Ave we all packed ourselves off to bed.
Tuesday morning dog walk
I stepped out of bed to the sound of Sadie having her breakfast, Maggi suggested I make her a piece of toast. Sadie impresses me that she is keen to go to school. She has prepared everything herself. I can’t remember wether I needed help to set off for school when I was her age. Probably not.
Carrie, Alex and Greg all left for a school conference and returned seemingly happy with what the teachers had said about Carrie. In the meantime I put Bennet’s collar on him and walk around the neighbourhood. All is grey with an overcast sky, but although it’s not raining it’s not cold either.
Arsenal Play in Champions League
At midday I sat down to watch Arsenal
play Sporting Lisbon in the 5 round of the Champions League. Last time out Sporting had beaten Manchester City 4-1 so Arsenal knew they would face a good team. A good start for the Gunners with Martinelli scoring after 7 minutes.
By half time Arsenal scored two more goals. All looked set for an easy victory until 2 minutes after the restart when Sporting pulled a goal back. Suddenly The Men in Red looked worried and vulnerable. They began to give the ball away unnecessarily.
On one of the rare sorties forward Arsenal won a penalty and Saka scored. From then life for the Gunners proceeded smoothly and they scored twice more to make it a rout 1-5.
Tuesday afternoon
After the Arsenal match I felt a little trapped in the house. Greg had left for a run, but done nothing else all day. I didn’t feel like sitting around and watching any more telly so I booked an Uber to go to The University of Washington book store. When I arrived I realised I’d made a mistake. The shop had very little stock in comparison to some of the Waterstones in London.
I rang Maggi and Alex and they came to pick me up. We dropped Carrie off at home and continued onto the Sub-Pop shop under the Amazon building in downtown Seattle. Maggi wanted to buy table presents for all Adam’s kids.
When we returned back to 8th I borrowed the Tesla and drove to another bookshop called Elliot Bay situated at Capitol Hill. At last a proper bookshop with a decent range. However when I came to look up books about Linux I had only one choice. I bought it.
I returned to 8th and Maggi and I decided to take the dog for a walk as he’d been inside for most of the day. We locked up the house and set off. A couple of minutes into our dog wander Greg calls to say he can’t get in the house. Maggi returns and I continue with Bennett.
No one is cooking tonight so rather than go out Greg orders a Mexican takeaway. As usual the food disappoints. We spend the evening watching Master Chef the professionals and having a laugh.
Alex returns with Carrie and Sadie from watching Wicked on stage after Maggi and I are in bed, but not asleep. Sadie liked the show but preferred the film.
Wednesday head to Bainbridge.
A great day to cross Puget Sound, calm flat water and clear blue sky and the air not too chilly. The journey takes just over 30 minutes. Everything runs smoothly, we arrive at the dock and have to wait awhile for the next ferry which loads up quickly when it arrives.
We drive to our AirBnB which is located at 10470 Battlepoint Road which is a very short journey. On the way we pass Devon and Dave’s house where we stayed last year for Thanksgiving. All of us love the accommodation. The house has 3 bedrooms a large open plan kitchen, dining and lounge area. Maggi and I are allocated the bedroom next to the lounge which had a small double bed but a ensuite bathroom.
Alex tells us that she has received an email from HR saying they are excited to talk about the job she has applied for which sounds very positive. We walk around the nearby Battlepoint Park together.
Greg does his usual trick of insisting everyone leave the kitchen and cooks a very nice spaghetti bolognaise for meat eaters and substitutes mushrooms for those who would prefer to avoid the meat. Maggi and I watch Masterchef on the iPad.
Thanksgiving day
Another pleasant November day. Alex, Maggi and I have a longer walk around Battlepoint Park chatting about nothing other than easy chit chat. We return home and spend some time on the jigsaw that we started yesterday. Greg has already started in the kitchen. He makes blinis and king prawns with a tomato dip. I really didn’t want to eat anything at this stage of the morning because I knew we would be eating a lot as the day progressed.
Not surprisingly Greg had forgotten to bring a few ingredients that he needed for his contribution to the Thanksgiving meal. Maggi and I drove to the Town and Country Market in Winslow. All the people we met in the store were super friendly which made it a pleasure to shop there.
Back to the house and more work on the jigsaw plus helping to clear up the chef’s mess after which we headed over to Devon and Dave’s house for a few nibbles and drinks. Dave had scooped out a few oysters from his small oyster garden at the bottom of the garden. They had 24 people coming over for the Thanksgiving meal. we stayed for 9- minutes or so had a good laugh with their family and then proceeded on to Brandy and Mark’s house we had a very nice Thanksgiving meal.
The party consisted of Brandi and Marc, the hosts plus Marc’s parents who are both 87 and of course Emily and Alex our hosts own off spring. With us lot we had 12 people sitting down for dinner. Unlike last year when we expected to eat at 4 and ended up eating at 6 this time everything proceeded smoothly. At the end of the meal we sat and watched old footage of Mark’s son dancing which we all laughed at and we played a silly game called buzz. After arriving at 3 we decided it was time to leave at 8 and come home for bed.
Back to Seattle
After a very pleasant walk around Battlepoint Park with Maggi and Alex we packed and drove to the Ferry. Unfortunately we missed the 11:35 ferry by a few minutes because after driving off Carrie said she had left her pillow behind. We returned to pick up the comforter and as a consequence we had to wait for 50 minutes.
We all decided that a cup of coffee would be a good idea while we waited. Alex and I had bought coffee before at The Bainbrige Island Museum of Art. As the name suggests the people working at the museum are all very arty. The middle aged woman who served us had short spikes hair and her body sported a selection of colourful tattoos.
The order for the coffees passed to a very tall person in a dress but obviously born a man indicated by her broad back, long sideburns and adam’s apple. I have never known anyone take so long to prepare coffee. Her routine involved weighing the holder that fitted into the gaggio and then filling it with ground coffee, weighing it again, after which she would throw some of the grounds away and weigh again. Happy with the weight she would then wipe it down and then place it into the gaggio. On top of the coffee maker sat a timer. She now set the time for the coffee to be expressed from the machine. The small amount of coffee would then be tipped into a paper cup. Not too difficult for a straight americano because all she needed to do was add the hot water. For anything with milk she went through a similar routine.
Eventually we all received a cold coffee and made our way back to the ferry queue just in time to board. A simple crossing and drive back home.
Early evening Alex, Maggi and myself drove up to the cocktail bar on McGraw St called Miriam’s. At five o’clock the place only had a few people inside. Maggi had her usual Margarita, Alex chose a strong cocktail based around bourbon and I wanted a whiskey. I decided it might make a nice change to have a bourbon and I asked her to provide one that wasn’t sweet. I don’t think it made any difference as I think they all have a molasses background to their flavours. I stuffed a lot of ice into the place and it palatable.
Back to the house to pick up Carrie and Sadie and then off to downtown for a pre-theatre meal. Alex had booked a rather swanky place called Cinque Terra We sat down and immediately received the customary glasses of ice cold water plus some bread and a pesto dip. I immediately thought this could be a really nice meal. we had a super chatty waiter who wanted to upsell each and every dish we discussed. Eventually Maggi and Alex decided to share a pizza and vegetarian spaghetti while I choose the special lasagne vegetarian. I wouldn’t classify my food as anything above average. Maggi thought both the pizza and her spaghetti tasted of nothing.
We then walked up the road to the 5th Avenue theatre to watch Mary Poppins. The theatre teamed and we walked upstairs to the gallery to take our seats. The lights went down and the curtain rose and the musical began. Soon afterwards I fell asleep, only a light sleep and I kept drifting off and waking. I managed to pull myself together for the second part of the first half and stayed awake.
I stood up at the interval and suddenly realised how hot it had become. We escaped to the stairs where everything was much cooler. Alex bought much needed water for all of us and we weaved our way down to the foyer. To maintain the spirit of the season a man and woman stood dressed in Santa costumes. We had our picture taken with them.
The best musical performance of the night, Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious, had the crowd cheering and even I enjoyed the rendition as the performers each held up a letter from this long and peculiar word. They then presented the letters to express different ideas as they danced their way through the song.
We slipped out the back way and managed to pick up an Uber for our journey home where Greg waited for us.
Saturday our last day and our journey home.
A very lazy morning where I watched Arsenal beat West Ham away with a scoreline of 2-5. At one point West Ham started to come back at the Gunners but the 5th goal really took the stuffing out of the home team.
Maggi and I walked into Queen Anne just before lunch to post a thank you note to Brandi and Marc for hosting the Thanksgiving meal and then visited the newly constructed Safeway.
At 4pm Alex drove us to the airport for our flight home. A beautiful sunset lay before us as we drove to the airport.
We arrived at the BA lounge to find that it had been gutted and that the alternative lounge is now located in D gates two train rides away. We decided therefore to have a drink in the general area and ended up paying $35 for two beers.
I slept quite well on the journey after our meal which happened to be a very tasty vegetarian wellington dish preceded by a leek soup, one of the best meals we had outside of the home on the whole trip.