I come to you from Seattle-Tacoma International Airport.
I’m waiting to catch a flight back to North Carolina via Denver, but I think I got to the airport a little too early. I’ve been sitting at my gate for the past two hours doing absolutely nothing but listening to music and contemplating life.
And by the way, you read the title right. I, perhaps incredibly irrationally, flew all the way across the country for barely a weekend. That’s six whole hours cramped into an economy seat.
But I have this thing called “a job” to get back to, so I really didn’t have a lot of time to work with 😔.
I was visiting my very intelligent best friend, who is interning out here for the summer. She took me all around the city. I think we walked over 60,000 steps this weekend.
I remember booking these tickets on a whim back in May. It was a bright morning. I bought an overpriced lavender latte at a café before work because my now former boss told me I needed to warm up my voice to record for the radio. Then I drove to the studio. I was writing a script when the urge to check the price for a weekend trip to Seattle came up.
So I did. And now here I am, a few hundred dollars poorer but infinitely (okay, not infinitely, but you know that I mean) richer in life experience.
My best friend and I crammed everything we possibly could into the few hours I spent here.
On Saturday, we passed the Space Needle while taking a bus to Pier 50, then from the docks walked to Pike Place, where we ate a delicious meal of steak and eggs and chicken caesar salad in a quaint little cafe, the interior of which was adorned with plants and string lights. We also stopped by the Seattle Public Library, which put every library in North Carolina to shame.
After lunch, we made our way to the first ever Costco, which sent me into absolute fangirl mode, because, as I’ve mentioned before on this blog, I happen to really like Costco. Then, we took a Lyft to The Museum of Flight. We toured a bunch of cool planes, including the discontinued Concorde.
Brief Intermission: I now am back in Raleigh, North Carolina, where I am sitting very comfortably on my bed. I’m stuffed with chocolate covered bananas from Trader Joe’s. They were very good.
The rest of the day was spent wandering the area around Seattle’s International District. We went to this cool Japanese grocery store called Uwajimaya, which had a stationary store inside it that sold the most expensive pens I’ve ever seen in my whole life. Dinner consisted of chicken katsu and beef pho. C’était très délicieuse.
Finally, we roamed around a park that looked like it was a fairy wonderland — there were brightly saturated flowers and brown bunnies and cerulean lakes and sunlight streaming through sage green leaves. Seattle has some of the most gorgeous nature I’ve ever seen, and I usually am not a big fan of too much nature (see: me, constantly talking about New York City.)
My best friend’s house for the summer is located on a very steep hill, so the trek back was rather interesting, to say the least. But Saturday was a total dub, and it was so nice getting to hang out with my best friend after a whole month — although I do sincerely worry that she will relocate to Seattle and leave me by myself on the East Coast.
On Sunday, we headed out the door around 7 a.m. and made our way toward the University of Washington – Seattle campus. The two of us were both flabbergasted in awe of its beauty and upset that both our schools paled so hard in comparison. We also would very much like to know how UW has enough money to maintain such a campus seeing as the state does not charge income tax, so if you’re able to answer that question, please do so in the comments.
We took a stroll around the UW Botanical Gardens, which were decently close to main campus. I said this before, but I really can’t say it enough — Seattle, and just Washington in general, is ridiculously, jaw-droppingly gorgeous.
What we did next is somewhat of an inside joke. My best friend and I visited a graveyard near where we lived just after our finals ended freshman year, completely unironically. This year we did the same — except this time it was the place Bruce Lee was buried. It was this extremely well-landscaped site right beside Volunteer Park, which is located by a super fancy rich people neighborhood.
Lastly, we grabbed brunch at some hippie café that played acoustic-only songs with my friend from UNC and her roommate. They’re both interning at Microsoft this summer and live in Redmond, Washington. My UNC friend’s roommate is from New York and absolutely despised Seattle.
As someone who is genuinely conflicted about what I want to do after graduation, I could understand both sides of the metaphorical spectrum she was painting. New York is nothing like Seattle or North Carolina — it’s loud and bustling and there’s something always going on. Seattle has a lot of big tech, but it’s much slower and far more green, similar to the Raleigh-Durham area, where I was raised.
I don’t know whether I want to live in a place that’s almost comforting like home, or a place that will push me way beyond my comfort zone. But that’s a conversation for another day.
The trip was pretty much over after that. I went back to my best friend’s place, packed my bags and helped her panting roommates unload groceries from the nearest Safeway they lugged back in a rolling suitcase.
And that was pretty much it. Tackled Seattle in a good, too-short weekend.