Got Coffee?

When I think of Seattle, I think of Starbucks. After all, Seattle is the birthplace of Starbucks and there are so many little coffee shops everywhere. So when I went to Seattle last weekend, I thought I'd be drinking a lot of coffee. Well, there was certainly plenty to drink, but not all of it was coffee!

Our first drinking adventure was in Volunteer Park, where we landed right after lunch on our first day in Seattle. It was a chilly afternoon (for those of us from Texas!) and Katy spied a little stand with a sign that read "Spicy Chai Tea." Sounds yummy, right? Katy and I decided to treat ourselves to some hot tea. Well, let's just say we were a tad disappointed that $3 bought us tea from a packet (a mix, not even a tea bag!), a couple of grinds of pepper, and a whole lot of hot water. It didn't really taste like tea. It mostly tasted like hot water. Katy drank hers, but I dumped mine out. Fortunately, Volunteer Park was pretty enough to make up for the non-chai chai tea.

The next drinking adventure actually did involve coffee. I'm an early riser and Katy shared my room on the Seattle trip, so the two of us were up before anyone else in the house on Sunday. I need my coffee first thing in the morning, so Katy and I went hunting around Leigh's kitchen in search of the coffee pot. Now, at most houses the coffee pot is pretty easy to find right there on the counter. And to be fair to Leigh, hers is right there on the counter. It just doesn't exactly look like a coffee pot. Leigh and Tyler have a Chemex.

See? When it's empty, it looks like a carafe, not a coffee pot! Fortunately Katy recognized this contraption and knew we just needed to find some filters for it. We went through all of Leigh's cupboards, and just as Katy was suggesting using a sock as a filter, we found them and managed to brew some coffee. You really should have seen us, though, because we had no idea what we were doing. Once we found those filters, we did have some tasty coffee in no time. Here we are drinking more coffee and eating Tyler's yummy waffles after our morning workout.

Our third drinking adventure involved some exotic green tea elixir at the farmers' market. I can't remember the name of this mysterious drink, but the gentleman brewing it claimed it was good for your liver, so Katy named it the "Green Tea Vinegar Probiotic Hangover Cure." We did taste it and it was vinegary. We didn't buy any.

But these guys did! Do you see the bottle on the left side of the bar? Maybe they know something we don't...

Next up, we headed over to a cute little wine shop called Portalis for a mid-day wine tasting.
Yum! In back, they had two skylights made out of old wine bottles. Pretty cool, huh?

And now we're on to drinking adventure no. 5. We had burgers and bloody Marys for lunch (well, some of us did). Don't these look beautiful? It's like drinking your salad. The neatest part was that our waiter was from Texas. If you look closely, you can see a Texas tattoo on his arm.
And our final drinking adventure took place near the Pike Place Market, home of the original Starbucks (I did see it but we did not stop there). On Monday morning, after poking around the market, we found this adorable little tea shop called the Perennial Tea Room. I love tea, which is probably why I was taken in by the spicy chai tea in the park on our first day. I bought myself a couple of bags of tea, including a Rooibos Chai. YUM! This stuff is amazing, and definitely has me leaving Seattle with happy tea memories!

So you can see that we had numerous "drinking adventures" on our trip to Seattle, but very little in the way of coffee. But you know, I didn't go to Seattle for the coffee.
I went to Seattle to be with my best friends.