Special Guest Post – Seattle Visit Day 3

SUNDAY

We started the day with 7:30am breakfast at Roxy’s.  No, we are not slackers.  Even while on vacation, we are up and at it; too much to see/do and too little time.  Roxy’s is about a block from Will/Joni’s apartment and like the typical small town café you would see in MN serving up plates piled high with homemade food.  The regulars and locals even eyed us as if to say, “Who are the strangers and what are they doing here?”

Now this next part is just informational.  I’ll do my best to explain the neighborhood.  So you walk from Roxy’s to the end of the block and there is Phinney Street.  The street the kids live on.

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Let’s stop for a moment to discuss that building over there.  It smelled awful.  I commented that it smelled just a terrible strong skunk smell.  I turned around and the children were smirking.  I have seen that smirking before!  I have seen that smirk when I have said something that strikes teenagers as really stupid because they know something I don’t know. (EX: “You are taking that math test tomorrow.  Period!”  And the teenagers know everyone is taking a school skip day tomorrow.  They won’t even BE in school much less taking a math test.  So then they smirk.)  I don’t know why the red cross sign is green and there was a sign on the door stating that you had to have a WA state ID or medical card or something.  Well, let’s move on and turn right.

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You walk half way up the block to the apartment.  Here they are going into their apartment building.

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Next we walked back down Phinney Street, past the skunk store, and crossed the street.  That’s the corner where Will gets on the bus each morning.  When you walk down to the end of that block, you see the outdoor movie lot.

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This is a parking lot by day and the theater by night.  People bring their lawn chairs, sit in the parking lot and watch the movie.  The movies are kind of old ones, but occasionally I would think there would be a good old one to see.  Besides, it’s a great opportunity for the community to gather and visit.

Across the street from the cinema is…………………

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THE CHOCOLATE FACTORY!  We did not have time for the tour, but sampled all the candy and bought a few bars.  Then we walked down the side of the building to the next street, Canal Street, which is the one blocked off every Sunday for the Market.  You have this to the right.

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The dinosaurs.  Joni rides her bike down to and behind the dinosaurs to get on the bike path which is right between the dinosaurs and the canal.  She rides 2.5 miles to the school.  It is a well-used path, no car traffic around it, and looks pretty safe to be biking on.  We’ll be coming back to these dinosaurs later in the day.

And to the left on Canal Street is where the Sunday Market begins.  I did not take any pictures of the market, but it is lots of jewelry and items people have made, clothes, pictures, some food, honey, jams and an indoor part packed with vendors.  There were also a few places with old items like tools, sewing machines, kids’ toys, kitchen utensils, etc.  Joni bought a cheese grater.  I had expected the Sunday Market to be fresh vegetable but did not see any of that, but they did have those FLOWERS!

We exited the Market at the end of the block and visited an organic grocery store to pick up gluten-free crackers and salmon.  We walked around the corner so I could get some Peet’s coffee.  We could get Peet’s in Florida, but not in MN.

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On down the street, we saw the statue of Lenin.  The statue was constructed by a guy in Czechoslovakia shortly before the Czechoslovakia revolution.   When the country fell away from communism, you can imagine how popular the new statue of a communist leader was so the townspeople threw it into the dump.  An American found it there, eventually bought it, shipped it to Seattle, and amid some uproar by the residents of Seattle, it got put up in Fremont.  It rather surprised everyone to see how much the Fremont people enjoy their statue.  They dress up and paint the statue appropriately for all the holidays/events.  (EX; decorate it with Christmas lights)  You are supposed to shake fingers with Lenin for good luck……….or something.  Of course, some communists and people who need to have a “cause” occasionally express their outrage that Lenin is treated so inappropriately and disrespectfully.  And I would agree with them if Lenin were a real person standing there, but he’s a statue; he doesn’t have feelings.  I certainly could not go along with putting a red dress on a real person and painting his face blue.  That would not be very nice…………………..but I’m getting off track here.

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Then it was on to see the Troll under the bridge.  On our way, we passed this.

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Everyone needs to know where their local branch of the library is and this is Fremont’s!  The kids have their library cards.  Next to the library was a van with “for library use only.  Library staff only”.  We wondered if our Trish, in all her 25 years of librarying,  ever got a library van to drive around in.  I don’t think the notion ever occurred to her.  Otherwise, she would have been in to the Commissioners demanding that perk.

Now the Troll is under the Aurora Bridge, right where the bridge/highway starts over the canal.  You have to climb the hill up to it and this is what I meant by “got some help”.

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What daughter-in-law do you know that would help push her old mother-in-law up a hill?  Many would help kick their mother-in-law down the hill, but up the hill?  Surprisingly, it really helps!  And notice who is carrying our sack of purchases in that paper bag all this way!

I thought this may be the solution to any unemployment issues Seattle might have.  The City would hire all those folks as people-pushers, station them at the bottom of the most used, popular hills, and they could push people up the hills all day.  Of course, they could only be the young strong unemployed and tourists could give the people pushers tips in addition to their minimum wage.  Anyway………………..here we are at the Troll.  We were supposed to climb up there and try to poke the Troll’s eye out but, since there were several other groups trying to take pictures by the Troll, we never got to that part.  Besides, asking my daughter-in-law to push me up onto the Troll’s shoulder may be taking advantage of her kindness.

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Next we headed back to the kids’ apartment for a while.  We had some time before the next event, so we used it to get acquainted with Minecraft, the video game.  I had heard of that game and just assumed it was shooting aliens/monsters/people or stealing cars like all the other video games.  It turns out to be chopping up cube shaped rocks to make stuff.  That’s it-chopping up rocks.  It reminded me of the old Sims building computer games Will started out on when he was about 10.  You always hear how video games are not good for kids and make them more violent.  Minecraft would not be one of the video games included in that idea.   The kids were quite excited about the game, but Eldon & I could not really see the point of playing that.  We may have dozed off.

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………………………….I say we’ve dozed off…………………you can go now, but be back here at 1pm for that 1:30pm reservation we have.  Thank you.

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