Caroline Fontenot

Seattle was amazing for so many reasons. A city on the water, the food, the cleanliness, the tourist traps, but really, it was the people there that made this the best part of our trip. Marks parents made the trip for the LSU game, along with a ton of their friends, and the Tigners! Mark and I actually shared a hotel room with Tig and Brad, which was awesome. When we arrived to Seattle we jumped on the tourist train along with everyone else. If you didn’t know better, judging by the amount of LSU fans we came across, you’d think LSU was in the National Championship. They were everywhere!! Purple and gold flooded the city and Mark drooled everywhere.

Let’s get to all the yum-ography, starting with the Market!

All the colors in the market were making my mind melt. I couldn’t stop taking photos!

The fish throwing, of course…

The biggest lobster tails I have ever seen!! Lobster is my favorite shellfish, really my favorite seafood, so if I had had $60 and a kitchen to cook in, one of those would have been mine.

Then we ventured over to the overprice Space Needle to be like everyone else. The highlight of the Space Needle? The LSU football team was there with us!

That night for dinner we ate at Dahlia Lounge. I saw Dahlia Lounge featured on Food Network’s The Best Thing I Ever Ate, our new favorite Food Network show! Giada said that Dahlia Lounge had the best crab cakes she’d ever eaten, and being a crab cake lover, I knew I had to have them! She was right…they are incredible!! We also had the best donuts in the world for desert there, which Giada says are “the best fried item I can think of…ever.” In the show, they are featured at Lola, which is right across the street from Dahlia Lounge. We found out they are owned by the same person, thus, serve the same incredible donuts! If you ever go to Seattle you absolutely have to have them. You don’t understand.

I don’t have any photos of the LSU madness because it was a rainy day and I didn’t want to bring my camera (and didn’t have my waterproof one with me!). I did snap this phonetograph when we got to Husky stadium, one of the coolest stadium locations ever. Speaking of my waterproof camera, it’s for sale!! Comment or email me if you’re interested. Click here to see it’s specs.

On our last full day in Seattle we went to some wineries just outside the city. Just to let you know, if you’re a wine fan, Covey Run of the Columbia Winery is one of the best Cabernet’s I have EVER HAD. It tastes like velvet and heaven in your glass.

I’d also like to say that on this same day I had clam chowder for the first time at Ivars and loved it. I’m not sure why I waited so long to eat a cup! But before we got to Ivars, we ran into McDreamy on the Pier.

On our last night we ate at Chinook’s which was located right here…

From where we sat I looked at the Sea Star, one of the boats from Discovery Channel’s Deadliest Catch.

To see some more photos from the trip, click here to visit the Facebook album.

We decided back in the winter that we wanted to go to Portland and Seattle to celebrate our year anniversary, which isn’t until October 4. But we went in September for two reasons. 1: we heard that was the best weather. And 2, which is the main reason: LSU played Washington in Seattle (more on that tomorrow!)

For some reason we have always wanted to go to these two cities and we had fun in both, but today I’m blogging our Portland trip via photos. Here’s your tour…

We stayed at the super cool Jupiter Hotel where we had a chalkboard door! I want one in our next house.

We crossed the Willamette River everyday to get downtown.

Portland has 10 distinctive bridges spanning this river which has given the city the nickname “Bridgetown.” Here was our favorite taken with the Lensbaby…

Some Lensbaby action to the famous Made in Oregon sign…

The arm extended self portrait is vital for vacay.

The Bridgeport BrewPub is Portland’s oldest microbrewery. It was the first place in my life that I enjoyed an Extra Pale Ale.

Mark gets lots of photos taken of him when we travel.

We visited Portland’s Classical Chinese Garden. It’s the biggest Suzhou-style garden outside of China!

While we were there, we went into a neat little room where you could discover your fortune. “Fortune cookies are fun,” I thought, so we did it. Basically, there is a huge dresser of about 50 drawers and on top of it, a jar with sticks in it. You hold the jar out from you parallel to the ground and shake it. Whatever stick falls out or clearly comes out the most, you grab. On the stick is a number. Whatever number your stick has you find that drawer from the chest. We got number 31 and found this fortune inside that read You will soon receive important news that could affect your residence. Now by no means do I ever take fortunes seriously, but I’d be lying if I said I didn’t freak out a little. (3 days later, we found out Mark got the job in Georgia!)

We also went to Deschutes Brewery, which we liked a lot more than Bridegport.

We did a lot of other awesome stuff that is just too much to blog, but one of our favorite things was the personal tour of Nike my friend Ryan gave us! Ryan and I had Rec and Leisure classes together at UNT and became friends. He’s one of the funniest people I’ve ever met and his wife Mary is also a blast. They took us out one night for a good time in Portland and then on Labor day, Ryan took us to Nike. That place is WHOA! Ryan is a designer for Jordan, which is beyond amazing, and we got to see a lot of stuff that I can’t even tell you about because I’d literally have to kill you.

The campus is HUGE, complete with soccer fields, tennis courts, gyms, gardens, you name it, they got it. It was a fun way to spend our last day!

Tomorrow I’ll blog the Seattle portion of our trip!!