Weekend Update

This is going to be a long one ... are you ready?  First, I need to make some introductions.  We hung out with some people this weekend that I haven't talked about on the blog before.  Mateo is in the Navy with J.  He flies the Prowler which is the plane that the Growler is replacing.  R. is dating Mateo.  She had a friend in town from L.A., so we'll call her L.A.  S2 is my friend from the legal aid clinic I volunteer at.  We have the same name, we're both from the Midwest and we both can't find jobs.  We've got a lot in common :)  Her husband, R.H., hung out with us as well.

Friday night, we met up with Mateo, R. and L.A. at Spur Gastropub in Belltown.  I didn't know what a gastropub was until I looked it up on Wikipedia -- a gastropub is a bar and restaurant that serves high-end beer and food.  Works for me!  We ate dinner at home, so we weren't able to try to Pork Belly Sliders that everyone raves about on Yelp, but their drinks were fabulous and we were able to get a table.  From there, we headed to an old favorite, The Bathtub Gin & Co., a fabulous, hidden speakeasy in Belltown.  This is one of my favorite places to go in Seattle, but it's very tiny and there can be a wait to get in on the weekends.  We had to wait for about 10 minutes to get in (we had a party of 6) but we were able to get a spot in the lower level with chairs and sofas.  I'm on a Moscow Mule kick, so I had their version, the Soviet Mule.  We wanted to try one more place before we went home, so we headed up the street to Rob Roy.  They had a long and fabulous looking cocktail menu, but they were all pretty pricey so I stuck with my tried and true V&T.  We parted ways with Mateo, R. and L.A. and headed home.  But not without making a little pit stop at Jimmy John's :)  And J. even walked away with a whole loaf of their wheat bread for free.  Apparently, they throw out their leftover wheat bread every night after closing ... shouldn't they be donating it or doing something less wasteful?!

Mateo had tickets to the Sounders game on Saturday afternoon and invited J. to go with him.  I didn't know what I was going to do, but I knew if I had a free ride to Seattle, I was going!  I made plans with S2 to go to lunch and do a little window shopping around Fremont.  However, by the time we got to R.'s to pick up Mateo, our plans had changed (and for the better!)  I thought R. and L.A. were going to the game with Mateo and J., but Mateo only had 2 tickets so they decided to drive out to Snoqualmie Falls.  S2 and I decided to tag along and I am so glad that we did! 

Beautiful Snoqualmie Falls:

It was hard to get a good picture of the falls because the trail was closed that lads to the bottom of the falls.  It's not closed for maintenance or for the season ... it's closed until 2013!  So, in 2013 one of my resolutions is going to be to visit Snoqualmie Falls and hike to the bottom!

After we viewed the Falls, we headed up to the hotel overlooking to Falls for lunch.  The wait for our food was SO long (like 45+ minutes), but the food was good and we were able to snag a window seat so the view was fabulous.  

From there, we took L.A. to the airport and headed back to Fremont to meet up with J. and Mateo who were enjoying happy hour at Brouwer's.  We got a bit delayed - we parked right across from Theo's (the chocolate store) and had to stop in for samples!  After filling up on chocolate samples, we joined the boys at Brouwer's and R.H. came and joined us as well.  We had a great time getting to know each other.  I haven't really met that many people who live in Seattle since we moved here and I feel like things are turning around!  We've been going down to Seattle a lot more often lately and it's been SO.MUCH.FUN.  I hope we continue with this trend :)

After Brouwer's we decided to try one more bar in Fremont.  On Friday night, the three bars we went to were named as one of Seattle's top 25 bars by Seattle Met so we decided to go to only Fremont bar on the list, Quoin (coin).  It was pretty crowded in the bar area so we decided to sit outside around the fire!  It was a lot of fun ... I wished I had marshmallows with me!

Going into the weekend, we had absolutely no plans and it turned out to be one of the weekends we have had in a long time.  I am a city girl 100% and I love exploring Seattle.  It's an added bonus when you get to do it with people who actually live there and know all the hidden gems!

Thanks for such a great weekend J., N., Mateo, R., L.A., S2 and R.H.!