Smoking Seattle

Sunday, November 23rd, one of Mike's best friends from college, Jody, lost her husband, John, to a 4 year battle with the evil disease, cancer.  The vigil and funeral to celebrate his life were to be held in Seattle Nov. 30th and Dec 1st.  It was important for us to be there to support Jody, so we quickly found surprising reasonable airfare and hotel rates to make the trip.  Mike wanted to be there for more time then I was able to take off work, so we traveled separately.  He left Friday morning and was able to spend some time with Jody shopping.  I left Friday evening after work and got there very late that night.  

While we were on call all weekend if and when Jody wanted to hang out, not surprisingly, she was grieving and not able to spend a lot of time with us.  So, we had a little time to fill on our own.  Mike and I both have friends that live in Seattle and have both been there several times, but have not been there as tourists.  So, we figured we'd spend some time doing touristy things.

First thing we decided to do was to take inspiration from the great view from our hotel room and visit the space needle.

View from hotel window

Even though we were chided by the locals for doing such a "generic," "overpriced," tourist activity, we still enjoyed it.  The space needle was about a 20 minute walk from our hotel. Coming from Boston temperatures, we found it funny to see lots of folks on the street dressed in really heavy coats while we were quite comfortable in light jackets.

Self portrait from the top of the needle

Me with the tree needle with the space needle

After we left the needle, we wandered back to our hotel and saw this sight that I feel one would only see in the good ol' US of A:
If you look closely at this pictures, you'll see your typical black crow, by McDonald's with 2 (yes 2!!) fully shelled peanuts in his mouth.  His beak is stretched so wide it looks really painful for the little guy.  Unbelievable.

Saturday night, we met up with my good friend from college, Anna, and her boyfriend, Jon.  It was great to see her and spend a little time catching up.  I forgot to take my camera to dinner so I'll have to wait for Anna to send me the pictures she took of us. 

Sunday morning, still no word from Jody, so we walked down to Pioneer Square to do the Seattle Underground Tour.  Apparently the enjoyment of the tour is entirely dependent on your guide.  Luckily, we had an awesome guide who was funny and entertaining.  She led us through the underground of Seattle that used to be street level.  It was pretty fascinating to hear about the history that formed the city which you can read about extensively (about half way down the page) here.  Luckily, we got through the entire tour seeing no rats or ghosts!  Yay!

"Skylight" from underground Seattle

"Skylight" as seen from street level (you'll see these all over downtown Seattle)

As tourists, we couldn't help but notice one big difference in the Seattle population that, very luckily, we are no longer used to - lots and lots of smokers!  It seems the Seattle population is a little behind the trend of having healthy lungs. It's become quite obvious, with the US adopting non smoking laws for restaurants and bars, who's still been unable to kick the habit.  You'll find those folks puffing away in doorways and on sidewalks.  We were just amazed, though, at the large amounts of groups everywhere congregating with their packs of cigarettes.  That's why we referred to the city for the remainder of the trip as "Smoking Seattle."

Sunday evening was the vigil.  It was an incredibly moving night of friends and family telling stories about John and a great photo slide show set to his music.  Obviously, it was very emotional.  Afterwards, Jody and John's good friend opened up one of his bars for all the friends and family to gather and spend more time together.  All proceeds from the night went towards John's medical fund.  

Monday morning was the funeral.  After the services, there was a lovely luncheon at the church where we were able to get to know Jody's friends and family a little more.  After some rest at the hotel, we met up with my good college friend, Mike, who recently moved to Seattle.  We had a great dinner at the hotel restaurant.  Mike had just returned to Seattle from spending the Thanksgiving holiday in Dallas, so it was great to squeeze in a little catch up time with him as well.  Unfortunately, Mike's lovely wife Krista (who is pregnant and due in early July - congrats to them!) was working late and unable to join us.

Mike J, me and (my) Mike

Tuesday morning, Mike drove me to the airport and I traveled all day back to Boston.  Mike didn't fly back until Wednesday.  Luckily, he was able to spend some time with Jody on Tuesday.

Though it was a quick, tiring and very emotional trip, we were very glad we made it.  Getting to see some of the sights and spend some quality time with such great friends was just a huge added bonus.