Tonight, looking back toward downtown from Elliottt Bay Marina (Space Needle on the left):
Our first night at the marina (Thursday) we ran into our friend Sam and hung out with him on his Nordic 37 and had some wine/beer, and then he came over for a late dinner…really a fun evening.
This boat show business is serious up here! We went to the boat show in Portland a few weeks back and it took us about an hour, max. Not so here at the Seattle Boat Show. This is just part of one of the halls:
We signed up for Car2Go before we left Portland, figuring it would be super helpful for us getting around Seattle while we're in town. So far, it's great!
That's the front of our first cute little Smart car. For those of you unfamiliar with Car2Go, you sign up online for something like a $35 initial fee. They check your driving record and give you the green light, and then with a simple iPhone app (from wherever you are in cities that have Car2Go) you can see where the cars are. You can click on one and reserve it for 30 minutes (that means no one else can come take it before you get there as long as it's within 30 minutes). You get to your car, start the rental from your smart phone, the car unlocks, welcomes you, and you start your rental. The cost is .41 cents per minute, with a hourly cap of $14.99 or something. When you're done, you just click "finish rental" and it charges your account. So far, our rides across town have ranged in the 9-11 dollar range. You can park them in all the city metered spots without paying the meter, so it's probably not that much more than paying for parking in the end.
On Friday (the first day of the boat show) we headed over (via Car2Go) to Lake Union for the floating part of the show. We wanted to look at the new American Tugs (one of the contenders when we bought our Nordic Tug). They've done some really great things to the new Americans and they're beautiful. We saw a super cool handmade "Sockeye 45" made by the Devlin Boat Co. here in the PNW. Fantastic, and too hard to take good photos of, so here's its listing. There were some ENORMOUS (and expensive!!) boats over here that we peeked in…pretty cool, but not our thing.
We had some lunch and then took the free shuttle from Lake Union to Century Link Field to the indoor part of the boat show (running through January 31) and, whoa. We hung out a bit with our buddies at the Nordic "booth" (which is really a giant wooden stairway and deck up to a brand new Nordic 39 with a flybridge). Gorgeous boat, and fun seeing and hearing about all the upgrades they're doing (while we think about our second boat wishlist, of course).
We wandered the halls looking at boaty stuff, and stayed for a bit of the opening event "Uncorked" which was basically a scavenger hunt for wine. You get a souvenir wine glass and 6 tokens and a map of where the winery tables are hidden in the maze of boats. We wandered a bit and tasted three wines and then headed back to the boat for some dinner.
The closest Car2Go was about a half mile away up in Chinatown, and it was raining…but we're seasoned northwesters and were dutifully wearing our GoreTex, so not a big deal and kind of a nice walk (after all that…walking).
This afternoon we attended two of four Boat University seminars we registered for: (1) Starting the Trek North through Southern BC: Nanaimo through Cape Caution (something we will probably do in the near future) and then (2) Getting on the Outside: Cruising the West Coast of Vancouver Island (something we'll wait a bit to do). Both talks were interesting and informative.
Tomorrow morning we've got (1) Cruising the Wild & Beautiful Northern BC, and then (2) Understanding the Weather and Cruise Decisiong Making.
Tonight we picked up a Car2Go and headed over to the Taylor Shellfish Oyster Bar in Queen Anne for some oysters. SO. DELICIOUS. We had a dozen on the halfshell (two each of Virginica, Shigoku, Kumamoto, Pacific, Olympia, and Kusshi).
We shared a caesar salad, and then finished with two kinds of baked oysters: Oysters Marco (bacon, kale, shallot, cranberry, and parmesan) and Oysters Matsushima (mushrooms, shishito peppers, and miso butter). Also SO DELICIOUS.
Our same Car2Go was still outside when we were finished, so we re-rented it, stopped at Whole Foods for some groceries on the way home (not letting go of our rental yet) and then parked it at our secret (not really) spot at the marina. So far, we've always had a car there in the morning.
On Monday we'll be moving over to the Bell Harbor Marina (much closer to downtown, as shown in this billboard right up the road from us):
That'll be fun! We picked up a local bourbon at Whole Foods to try (2bar Spirits bourbon), and are having a little sip now. It's yum!
Another full day tomorrow, so early to bed!
