A year ago we bought a season pass to the Space Needle for a pretty cheap price. Since then, we've gone up quite a few times to enjoy the view. It was nice to be able to see the view from up top throughout the year as the seasons changed and at various times of day. Unfortunately, our pass expired this past week, so we probably won't go up any time soon. But, that's okay, we got our money's worth out of our season pass and enjoyed seeing so much of the city from up high.

View from Space Needle on Vimeo.

We did a lot of cool things during our second year of living here. Probably the most memorable things we did, didn't even happen in Seattle. We visited Adam and Sofia in Australia! It was my first time to be in a foreign country. We had so much fun hanging out with them and exploring Melbourne, Sydney, and the southern coast.

We also just visited Vancouver, Canada for the first time and saw two events during the 2010 Winter Olympics. Vancouver is definitely a place we want to go again some day to explore more thoroughly.

Probably the biggest highlight that happened in Seattle was when my parents and grandma visited us in late July for the first time since we moved here. We went to Mount Rainier and the Olympic Peninsula. Unfortunately it was terribly hot when they were here, but it was still great to spend time together and show them around the city.

My cousins also came up for a short visit in May. It was cool hanging out with them and going out to eat at some good restaurants.

We attended several sporting events, including a Seahawks game, a few Sounders games, and the WSU-SMU college football game in Pullman. The Sounders games were especially fun because last year was their inaugural season and we have some of the best fans in all of US soccer. The Sounders were really good last season too, going into the playoffs.

We did a lot of hiking last year and finally hiked one of the most popular trails in the Northwest - Mount Si! We had awesome weather and it was so clear at the top that we could see Mount Rainier. It was a good work out, although a little difficult for me to make it down the last 2 miles with my knees getting tired.

On a more personal note, our new church opened its doors just about a month ago. It's nice to have our own space again. We slowly lost our view of the Space Needle from our apartment. And my sister got married last summer and just had her first baby about two weeks ago!

We're looking forward to year three in Seattle!

We posted our favorite places to eat in Seattle last year and after another year our favorite restaurants haven't changed much. Here are the things we love to eat in Seattle.

1. 
   La Carta de Oaxaca - A newcomer to our list, I loved this place after my first bite. This is not Tex-Mex, it's the style of food eaten in Oaxaca in Southern Mexico, and it is very good. Mole is a popular dish, as well as carne asada and tosadas. The meat has a good flavor and it all comes together to be very tasty. I can't wait to go back.





2. Red Mill Burgers - Our favorite place to eat last year, we still love to eat here. The burgers are moist and well-flavored and while they can have a little too much lettuce sometimes and be a little drippy, they're put together well overall. Having a burger with some fries or onion rings, and maybe a shake, makes it a great meal.


3. 
   Noah's Bagels - We may love Noah's bagels more now than we did a year ago. For one thing, we've had better luck at getting still-warm, freshly made bagels. They're absolutely fantastic when warm, but are still very good at any time. We've started getting super onion bagels lately, but we still like asiago and the occasional sesame, normally with plain cream cheese.





4. Pagliacci Pizza - The best pizza in Seattle. Unfortunately, we haven't been eating it as often lately, largely because of the price. But, it's definitely a treat when we have it - the cheese is good and well proportioned and the crust has the right amount of crispiness and chewiness.


5. 
   Djan’s Thai Restaurant - We've tried several Thai places, but Djan's is probably still our favorite. They have great noodle dishes and curries, though our last couple meals there haven't been as good as our first several meals were. We're hoping that the quality will return to as great as it was, but even if it doesn't, it will still be pretty good.

As of today we've been living in Seattle for two years. This past year has been a lot different from the first year, as the sense of adventure has dissolved into a routine, and satisfying, lifestyle.

We've had a lot of consistency since we moved here - I've been at my job for a year and a half and Lesley has been at hers for almost two years. And we've been living in the same place and going to the same church since we moved here.

We've become integrated into the culture and familiar with the city and there's no longer the same sense of excitement we had before.

Overall, we're pretty satisfied with living here. We like living in a city and being able to walk so many places as well as having plenty of opportunities to get outdoors. And, though winter is the worst time of year here, fortunately it hasn't been too bad this year.

On our way to Vancouver, we went to our favorite breakfast restaurant, Calico Cupboard! We weren't sure if we wanted to stop since we didn't know how bad the wait at the border would be, but we stopped anyway because we were hungry and couldn't pass up a chance to go there since it's more than an hour away from Seattle. I love the apple cider there! We thought we might have left a little late in the morning, but we ended up getting to the border by 10 or so and there was no wait whatsoever. I was really surprised.

When we got to Vancouver, we had to kill time before we went to the place we were staying. So, we went to the VanDusen Gardens for a little over an hour. They were ok, but I'm sure they're much prettier in the spring and summer. We had rented a room at someone's house that we found on the internet, so we weren't sure what to expect. But, our hosts were really nice people - they made us fresh hot breakfast every morning and they made us steak dinner the first night. It was like staying at a bed and breakfast.

The first few days in Vancouver were mostly spent exploring downtown and going to the speed skating event. We tried to eat some Chinese food, which there is tons of in Vancouver, after the speed skating event was over around 3, but all the ones we knew about were closed until dinner at 5. Hopefully we'll have a chance to have Chinese food next time we go to Vancouver. We did have sushi one night, which Vancouver is also famous for. It was decent, but nothing that great, I'm sure a different place would be better.

Vancouver also has a public market called Granville Island, which is very similar to Pike Place Market. There are all kinds of shops and places to get food there. Unfortunately it was swamped with people who were in town from the Olympics and was busier than it ever gets in the summer. We'll definitely have to go back some other time maybe during the week when it's not so busy.

We went to several parks in the city, including the awesome Stanley Park, which is one of the largest urban parks in North America. In fact, it's 10% bigger than Central Park in New York. We walked a few miles along the eastern seawall facing the main part of the city and could see the Olympic Cauldron and the rings on the water. We didn't spend nearly as much time there as we wanted to, so it is yet another thing we'd like to go to again some day.

On Monday, we took a ferry to North Vancouver and spent a few hours hiking in Lynn Canyon Park. The weather was much better than Saturday, so that was nice. After the park, we went to eat at Nando’s. We first had Nando’s when we visited Australia last October and I loved it. So I researched whether they had any locations nearby and found three in Vancouver! Unfortunately it wasn’t as good as what we had in Australia. The sauces were very different and the fries weren’t as good. It was decent though, and brought back fond memories of hanging out with Adam and Sofia in Melbourne.

We also explored the western part of downtown, mostly along Dedman Street. There were tons of restaurants and stores in that area, including an Italian restaurant where we had our Valentine’s dinner, Ciao Bella.

It was a nice trip, but a little too short. We didn’t try to do as many things as we would on a normal trip, due to the amount of additional people in the city for the Olympics and slower public transportation. We completely avoided museums and the aquarium. I’m looking forward to going back and exploring the city more thoroughly. Fortunately it's less than 2.5 hours away from Seattle.

Here are two videos we took of the Vancouver skyline from the south side of the city:

Vancouver Skyline on Vimeo.

Mountains and Vancouver Skyline on Vimeo.

We went to two Olympic events when we were in Vancouver. The first one was the men's 5,000 meter speed skating at the Richmond Olympic Oval. The event started at noon on Saturday, February 13th and was the second medal to be awarded. We rode the light rail to Richmond and arrived pretty early so we would have plenty of time. The weather was bad most of Saturday unfortunately, with windy, cold, and rainy conditions. We waited outside in line to get through security for probably 30 minutes, so I was happy to finally get inside the Oval.

I was in awe when we came up the stairs to our seats and could see the ice and all the flags for world countries hanging in the rafters. We were going to see an Olympic event! It was really amazing to watch. There were a lot of fans from the Netherlands, which apparently has a history of having great speed skaters. They were all dressed in orange, so they were easy to see in the crowds. There also weren't nearly as many seats as I thought there would be, it only seats 8,000 fans.

There were 14 pairs of skaters with an intermission in the middle. They started out with the slower pairs, but they still seemed fast to me. Each skater had to skate like 10 laps around the rink, I don't remember exactly. It was really exciting toward the last few pairs of skaters because each time they would just destroy the time set by the previous number one spot. As expected, Sven Kramer from the Netherlands won gold, with an Olympic record time of 6 minutes and 14.6 seconds. A Korean won silver with a time of 6 minutes and 16.95 seconds. Russian, Ivan Skobrev, won bronze with a time of 6 minutes and 18.05 seconds. It's hard to believe only a few mere seconds determine who wins gold.

One thing I didn't like was that we did not get to see the medal presentation. We only saw the flower ceremony. We would have had to pay even more money to buy a ticket to see the medal ceremony at BC Place. For some reason most of the events except the ones in Whistler are having the medal presentations at BC Place instead of the individual venues. So, I felt ripped off in that aspect.

The other event we went to was the first preliminary round men's hockey game, USA vs Switzerland at noon on Tuesday, the 16th. This took place at the General Motors Place (aka Canada Hockey Place) in downtown, normally where the Vancouver Canucks NHL team plays. This is the first Olympic games to use an NHL-sized ice rink. It's a really nice facility and only 15 years old.

We had really good seats, only a few rows up in the upper level and toward the end the USA would shoot at twice. Despite not really following hockey the past several years, I still recognized a lot of the USA players. I was disappointed though that Mike Modano wasn't on the team. I heard that they had decided to use a lot more younger players rather than the older, more veteran players like Modano. I did see former Dallas Star Jamie Langenbrunner play as the Team USA Captain. There were actually a lot more Switzerland fans than I thought there would be. There were also a lot of Canadian fans, who really cheered for Ryan Kesler, from the Canucks. It was a pretty clean game, no fights at all. The USA won 3-1.

Here's a video from the pre-game warm ups:

USA vs Switzerland Men's Hockey Warm ups on Vimeo.

I was a little disappointed we only went to two events. I wish we could have gone to more, especially short track speed skating or figure skating. It would have been really cool to see Apolo Anton Ohno win a medal. Still though, going to two events is probably more than most people will see in their lifetime. I'm very happy and lucky to have been able to go to the 2010 Olympic Winter Games.

Here are pictures from Vancouver and the events we went to:

Lesley is a much bigger fan of the Olympics than I have been, though I have been watching the Olympics more in recent years. One thing I like about the Olympics is how they bring the world together. The Olympics are truly a world-wide set of events, and having the Olympics so close to where we lived seemed like a rare opportunity. So, we decided to go to the games.

Leading up to the games, I was a little concerned about how the enormity of the Olympics might add to the crowd and make the city too full of people to enjoy doing anything.

Fortunately, there was no wait to drive across the border. And, while the public buses were crowded, it wasn't any worse than when we visited San Francisco. It looked like most people just stayed downtown. A few of the streets downtown were closed to vehicle traffic and full of people, especially on the Friday of the Opening Ceremonies. There were lots of people there, but they all fit downtown without making the city too crowded.

The atmosphere downtown was very festive. Buildings were decorated to support the Canadian Team and there was Olympic-inspired public art. There were also several celebration sites, which people waited in line to enter. One of the centrally-located sites, the one at Robson Square, was very crowded and every few minutes someone flew overhead along a zip line.

Robson Square during Olympics on Vimeo.

There was also an official Olympics store downtown. The few times we walked by, the line to enter the store was 30 minutes or so, combined with a long wait to check out inside the store.

There were also some protests, though the only protest we saw was of a large group of people holding signs and chanting in a plaza.

One of the big attractions was the Olympic cauldron. On the first day we visited it, people filled the area around the cauldron, some of them climbing on barricades, sitting on shoulders, or pushing their way to the fence to get a picture of the cauldron.

Olympic Cauldron on Vimeo.

Olympic Cauldron at night on Vimeo.

Being in Vancouver for the Olympics was quite an exciting experience.

It's nice that we've been having such a nice winter here in Seattle. No snow, and not much rain the past 6 weeks. January set a record for warm weather and so far February is looking warm too. The high the next several days is going to be in the mid-50s, with sunny skies. It's nice being able to look out the windows at work and see the clear skies and snow-capped mountains in the distance. These streaks of sunny days remind me of how much I really do love living here.

We went to the Men's 5000 meter speed skating event today at the Olympic Winter Games in Vancouver. It was a lot of fun and we saw a new Olympic record set by a skater from the Netherlands who had a lot of supporters in the stands.

Note: We had posted video of the last half-lap, but YouTube took it down due to copyright infringement.

I'm happy to announce that our little niece, Evelyn Victoria Smith, was born at 7:22pm February 11th! She weighs 6 lbs, 4.5 ounces. Mom, Dad, and Evelyn are all healthy and doing fine! Looking forward to seeing them in March! Troy and I are an Uncle and Aunt, how weird.

Goodbye, Space Needle, it was nice seeing you for so long. I hope the people in the Amazon building enjoy you as much as we did.

Note: This post was posted first at my Walking in Seattle blog.

Belltown is the densest part of the city outside of downtown and makes for a good place to walk. This route goes along the two most active streets in Belltown - 1st and 2nd Aves.


View Larger Map

Start at 1st and Virginia and head Northwest, parallel to Elliott Bay. This part of Belltown has the most shopping and, being close to downtown and Pike Place Market, is an easy starting point. Walking along either side of the street is fine, but the right side has several small parking lots that interrupt the streetscape.

The first parking lot you pass has a wall decorated with one of the larger graffiti-style urban art projects in Seattle (go here for pictures from the Hideous Belltown blog).

As you continue walking, you'll see lots of historic low-rise buildings and will pass more retail, including an Army/Navy Surplus Store. At Battery St, you'll pass over highway 99 and will have a view of Elliott Bay. On the other side of the street you'll see some more old Belltown buildings, including the Austin A Bell bldg from 1890.



Continue walking a few more blocks and turn right at Vine St. Vine St is a relatively narrow street lined with trees but without much for retail or dining. Vine isn't a major street, so you won't have a crosswalk or a traffic light when crossing Belltown's Avenues, so be careful. Pedestrians can legally cross any intersection, but some drivers may not know that. Unless you're doing this walk at a busy time of day, you should be able to cross easily during a break in vehicle traffic.

Turn left at 5th Ave and walk a block in parallel with the monorail. You'll arrive at Tilikum Place, a shaded outdoor plaza with a fountain, surrounded by a few places to stop and eat.



Feel free to stop and rest or continue and walk southwest along Cedar St. At 3rd Ave, you'll see a large mural on your right on the building of New Horizons Ministries.



Belltown has a diversity of architecture to enjoy. The buildings on the eastern side, away from the water, tend to be shorter and are less likely to be inhabited by any street-level retail or dining. As you continue towards the water, you'll see more recent development and high-rise condo buildings. We'll turn left at 2nd Ave toward downtown.

2nd Ave is a 3 lane street with relatively few traffic lights, so it does have some fast-moving vehicles. However, the parking and trees insulate help to insulate pedestrians from the street, and curb-bulbs at intersections make it feel a little safer to cross the avenue. As you continue southeast, you'll encounter more bars and restaurants, especially once you get to Battery St.

Feel free to stop at any one of these restaurants or bars for something to eat and drink, or stop for a game of pinball at Shorty's.

A few blocks more and we'll end our walk at 2nd Ave & Virginia, just a block away from where we started.

Highlights: continguous urban streetscape, density, restaurants and bars, stop and rest at Tilikum Place, coffee shops, diverse architecture, wide sidewalks

Lowlights: a few parking lots, some dead spots without much to look at, can be rough at night, not much retail outside of 1st Ave, lack of designated crosswalks

Note: I've started a blog called Walking in Seattle to share local walking-related news and stories as well as suggested walking routes. I posted the walk below on my Walking in Seattle blog and am re-posting it here for anyone who might be interested.


This is a short and easy walk through the downtown retail core - a great way to see the shopping that downtown has to offer and end up at Pike Place Market.


View Larger Map

Start at 5th Ave and University St downtown near the 5th Avenue Theatre and head northwest. The theatre had a new sign installed on December 3, 2009. The new sign is similar to the sign that was originally on the theatre when it opened in 1926 except the current sign uses energy-efficient LED bulbs.



Feel free to walk along either side of the street, though if I had to pick, I'd opt for the right side to avoid the Red Lion parking garage entrance and an area in front of the hotel where tourists gather. Though 5th Avenue can be busy with vehicle traffic, it is lined with trees that help insulate you from the street, as well as glass windowed stores that draw you in. This initial section of 5th Avenue has an upscale feel to it, with Gucci and Louis Vitton. When you reach 5th Ave and Pike Street, you'll see the Banana Republic on the north corner of the intersection.



Turn right on Pike St. You'll see the Washington State Convention Center ahead. Turn left on 6th Avenue. There is more shopping on this block and some places to eat. Continue for a block to Pine Street.

At Pine Street, you'll be in the middle of it all. This part of Seattle makes it feel like a big city. It seems there are always people walking here at any time of day. At this intersection you'll see Pacific Place mall and the flagship Nordstrom.

Turn left on Pine St. You'll pass by more retail stores, such as the GAP. There are also several entrances to the underground bus and light rail tunnel around this area. On your right will be Westlake Center. At Westlake Center you can take the Monorail to Seattle Center. The Westlake Center also has an outdoor plaza, which has the 2nd busiest Starbucks in North America. Up ahead you'll see Macy's (formerly the Bon Marché).



On the South side of the street is Westlake Park, which is often used by skateboarders and homeless. Cut through the park or turn left at 4th Avenue. On any weekend, you'll likely find people at 4th and Pine holding signs protesting Israel or encouraging you to come to God. And you'll be lucky to pass through this area without getting approached by someone with a clipboard representing a charity. You'll also likely pass by a few buskers and shoeshiners,

Turn right on Pike St and you'll be facing the "Public Market Center" sign of Pike Place Market. As you continue the few blocks to 1st Avenue, you'll pass a few shops and cafes. Our walking tour ends here in front of the market, but there is plenty more walking you can do there.

Finish at 1st Ave and Pike

Highlights: shopping, things to look at, people, excitement, places to eat at the market, street performers, tree-lined 5th ave, ending at Pike Place Market

Lowlights: intimidating big city feel, loiterers, a few underused areas of the streetscape, can be crowded

Ever since we've moved here, I've wished for a convenient Asian food takeout place, but there just weren't any options around. Finally, a couple weeks ago, Citrus Thai opened between our apartment and downtown. It's kind of a dead, mostly-commercial area, so I was surprised to see it open for dinner. It happens to be pretty convenient for my walk home, so earlier this week when I got off the bus downtown, I called to order some red curry and pad thai with chicken. The food was ready when I got there and it was still warm when I got home. And, it was pretty good. I'm glad to have another food option nearby and am looking forward to going back.

Amazon's construction has now begun to block our view of the Space Needle. During the past week, the construction crews have continued to add more and more floors of steel beams. We think at least another 3 or 4 floors will be added to what you see in the picture. We had an awesome view the past two years. It's really too bad we can't take any more beautiful sunset pictures with the Space Needle. I'll miss it. I guess at least we still have a decent view of Queen Anne Hill...

Belltown has an interesting history. It was once the site of Denny Hill, which was flattened early on the city's history, and for several decades had car dealerships and parking lots, and was fairly underused. However, now it is a neighborhood with office buildings, condos, restaurants, and clubs. Lesley and I spent the day there Saturday, checking it out.

We started with breakfast at Bang Bang Cafe. We both had breakfast burritos, which were pretty good and relatively cheap. I also had some good coffee there. From there, we walked northwest along Western Avenue and stopped at Canlis Glass, which had some beautiful glass pieces in its gallery. We also stopped by another art gallery before walking back towards downtown along 2nd Ave and stopping for tea. We walked around a bit and explored the area.

There are a lot of old, small commercial buildings, apartment buildings, and closer to the water there are lots of new, luxury condos. There are several parallel thoroughfares through the neighborhood and each has its own character. Western Ave is a high-traffic street with lots of clean, new condos and not a lot of street-level retail. 1st Ave has the most street-level retail and is one of the more enjoyable streets to walk on. 3rd Ave seems to have the least new development and the most low'rise old buildings.

Anyway, we then went to Olympic Sculpture Park, which is one of my favorite things in the city. After all that walking, we were happy to relax in a couple comfy chairs inside to sit and enjoy the view. We walked through the park and I walked past Alexander Calder's the Eagle, which is probably my favorite sculpture of any kind.

After the park, we went to Shorty's to have a hot dog and play pinball. It had been a while since I'd played pinball and we both had a lot of fun. We needed to kill some time then until dinner, so we stopped by The Yellow Leaf Cupcake to get a couple cupcakes for later. We had some tea there and played a game of Connect 4 that they had sitting out.

We then went to dinner at Tilikum Place Cafe, which is near small Tilikum Place plaza. Dinner was good. Belltown is most popular for its bar and club scene, but we'd had a long day and went home after dinner.

Compared to other neighborhoods, Belltown has lots of art galleries, trendy restaurants, and bars. There isn't a supermarket in Belltown, but there are lots of small corner grocers. And, I thought there wasn't a whole lot of retail shopping throughout most of the neighborhood. It's different from other neighborhoods because there aren't any houses. It has also gained a bit of a reputation due to the bar scene, homeless people there, and drug problems. Still, it's a good location in the city, close to downtown, close to the water, and flat, and is probably the best place for someone looking for urban living in Seattle.

Quick Belltown facts:

• Population: 10,871


• 2008 Median Condo Price: $388,250


• Cars per capita: 0.3


• 4th most walkable neighborhood in Seattle

Sources:
1. Seattle Metropolitan Real Estate
2. Walk Score: Seattle's Most Walkable Neighborhoods

This January was the warmest on record in Seattle. We started to notice a few weeks ago how we haven't had as much rain and how it's been a lot warmer than last year in January. It's definitely been great with highs most days in the upper 40s and lower 50s. It's made the winter a lot easier to handle. The National Weather Service is predicting a warmer, dryer weather through the rest of winter and into early spring, yay!

Here's an excerpt from an article on Komonews.com:

The average temperature was 46.97 degrees -- toppling the record of 46.56 degrees set in 2006, and a full six degrees above the normal average of 40.9 degrees. In fact, it's even warmer than a typical March! (which has an average temperature of 46.2 degrees.)

Persistent El Nino conditions were a factor for most of the month, which typically keeps the Pacific Northwest in a warmer air flow. In addition, an unusually strong and stubborn area of low pressure parked off our coast for several days, streaming warm, moist air from the tropical Pacific into Western Washington.

January 27th's 35 degree low was the only day the temperature dropped to 35 or colder. There were only five days in the month with a low below 40. We also had 9 days at 55 or warmer with a four day string of 59, 60, 57 and 56 degrees between Jan 18-21.

Here's a video from Komo 4 News about the first service in our new church building yesterday:



Here's the article that goes with it: Article about First Church