Sunday morning, Lesley's dad took the bus from their hotel to pick up the car he rented for our drive to Deception Pass. We all had a very good breakfast at 5 Spot on Queen Anne Hill. Lesley had some very sweet and very good cinnamon French toast as well as some fresh fruit. It was Father's Day so we gave Lesley's dad his present.

We headed north toward the Pass, and even though the weather was drizzly with low clouds, it was still quite scenic. At the Pass, we all walked part-way across the bridge and then down to the beach. Lesley and I continued for a longer walk along the beach and in the forest.

We all headed onward through Whidbey Island to Fort Casey. We stopped there for a picnic with several snacks we'd brought with us. While the weather didn't get much better, I really enjoyed exploring the remains of the military base that had been there. We also went inside the lighthouse and climbed to the top.

We continued through Whidbey Island and took the ferry back to Mukilteo. That evening, we ordered Pagliacci pizza and salad for dinner, played some games, and had some ice cream.

We slept in a little late Saturday, which was nice. We went to Top Pot for breakfast and it was really crowded, but thankfully we found a table in the upper level. Troy and I had our usual donuts - the chocolate bar and old fashioned glazed - which were both awesome. As we've said before, Top Pot donuts are our favorite.

Despite the cloudy, misty weather, we decided to go to Snoqualmie Falls in North Bend. Since my parents last visited, there have been some renovations to the viewpoints along the river that made it a lot nicer. The waterfall had the most water flowing over it we've ever seen there. We've had warmer temperatures lately which has melted a lot of the mountain snow and caused the river to swell. It was pretty impressive.

After that, we went to check out the Snoqualmie Casino just a few miles away. Troy and I had never been there, so it was interesting to see. We had actually never played the slot machines, even though we have been to Las Vegas before. I lost all the money I bet after about 30 minutes. Troy hesitantly played with $1 and lost it in about 15 minutes. Sometimes he only bet 1 cent at a time, so that's how it lasted so long. Thankfully we were able to play in a decent sized non-smoking section. It was a fun experience, but I don't think we will be going back any time soon.

We skipped lunch since we had donuts for a late breakfast, so we were pretty hungry for dinner. We went to my Dad's favorite restaurant, Palisade. We were able to get a table close to the glass and some of us had a nice view of the city and the bay. I had the salmon and Troy had the prime rib and both were delicious.

After dinner, we drove over to Fremont to show my Uncle the Troll and Gas Works Park. Then we went back to the apartment for more pie. My Uncle had mentioned playing some old video games like we used to play together when I was a kid, so we played Donkey Kong Country for a while. I also introduced him to Mario Kart Wii, which he actually played pretty decently.

Lesley and I both took Friday off from work. She went with her parents to Cafe Besalu for breakfast, where they had quiche, croissants, and hot tea, which was quite good, I'm told. After my morning doctor's appointment, we all met up at the Olympic Sculpture Park. People were setting up for an event, but we were able to walk through the park and enjoy the waterfront view. Afterward, we went to Discovery Park and went for a brief but very enjoyable walk through the forest.

On our way to lunch, we stopped at a western viewpoint in Magnolia to enjoy the view of the sunlit sound and Olympic Mountains. We went to the Space Needle for lunch, which everyone enjoyed.

After lunch, we came back to our apartment where Lesley and her uncle played more games and her dad and I walked to the grocery store to get some peanuts before the baseball game.

We left early and took a bus through the ride free area to the game. We were one of the first 20,000 fans so we received the Ichiro jersey that was being handed out beforehand. Our seats were along the first baseline fairly close to the action and far too many Phillies fans. It was a pretty good game and it was exciting to see the Mariners win and the Philadelphia team lose.

We took the light rail back downtown and then I drove Lesley's family back to their hotel.

My parents visited us for the second time this past weekend. My Uncle Bob was able to come with them, which was really nice. They took an early flight and arrived in Seattle in the morning. They took the Light Rail to downtown from the airport and said it was a nice, cheap way to go. Once downtown they took a cab to their hotel in Lower Queen Anne and then rode the Monorail back downtown. I took a half day off work and was able to leave at 11 to meet them.

We had really good weather that first day and they were very happy that they were in our 65 degree weather instead of 100 degrees in Texas. The first thing we did was walk to Pike Place market to eat lunch at Beecher's. We each had grilled panini's and my parents shared some of the famous mac n' cheese. We saw the flying fish, the gum wall, and all the flowers and fruit for sale. My parents bought some white nectarines and some Taylor gold pears to eat for later. They also got a few piroshky pastries from Piroshky Piroshky.

Then we walked by my office building so I could show my Uncle where I work. After that we made the long trek to our apartment on foot. Everyone seemed to like our apartment, especially more living room space and the deck. After hanging out for a bit, we took them to their hotel so they could check in and get settled. We picked them up around 5:30 to go to Djan's Thai restaurant in Wallingford. My parents had been to Djan's on their first trip here and liked it. Unfortunately the traffic was very bad on Mercer and it took about 20 minutes to go maybe 3 blocks. Needless to say, we were all pretty hungry once we got to the restaurant.

I got the yellow curry and Troy got some kind of noodle dish. My Dad and Uncle both got the pineapple fried rice, which I had a bite of and it tasted awesome. My Mom got the cashew nut dish with chicken like she got last time. It was all very good food. Now I want to go back again soon and get my own pineapple fried rice.

We took a slight detour on the way to Alki Beach through the U District to show them the University of Washington and Husky Stadium. The view from Alki was really nice, so we walked around there for a little bit before heading back to the apartment. I made an apple pie and a blueberry pie for them, so we had a few pieces of pie before we called it a night. It was a fun first day and a great start to their trip.

Seattle has the largest international film festival in the United States and we've attended a few films at each year's festival since we've been here. Some films have been quite good and a few have been disappointments, but they've always been interesting.

The first movie we'd planned to see this year was called Page One: Inside the New York Times. We had purchased our passes ahead of time and wanted to get to the theater 30 minutes early. This was our first time to the Egyptian theater, which is a few blocks from where we live. When we got there, the line was halfway around the block - hundreds of people had tickets and were in line to get in. We got a seat in the balcony and as people entered the theater to fill all the seats, the palpable energy of the audience reminded me again that this festival is a much bigger deal than just going to see another movie.

SIFF has gotten some criticism because it has so many movies, not just the very best. And with more than 3 weeks of movies playing all hours of the day, every day, at 7 theaters in the region, it's amazing that so many of them generate the crowd we saw at the Egyptian and at other theaters other times we've gone.

This movie looked at how the Times operates and documented how the print media industry is struggling to react to the growth of online media sources. The documentary focused on some rather interesting news stories that the Times was covering, people with unique personalities, and a fairly balanced, if shallow, touch on the issues. It was was one of the best films we've seen at SIFF.

Tomorrow, we'll be going to see a movie about Sushi, which sounds like a really interesting movie to me. And later we'll be seeing the only international movie we're planning to see at this year's festival - a French animated film about a cat in Paris - called A Cat in Paris.

While we do miss out on a lot of mainstream movies in theaters, we have enjoyed broadening our perspective in participating in the major event that is SIFF.

We slept in on Tuesday and checked out of the hotel around 10. Thankfully they were able to hold our bags at the front desk until later in the day before our boat ride back. Victoria is the capitol city of British Columbia, so they have a Parliament building there. We took a self-guided tour of it and even sat in on a live session of the legislative assembly for a few minutes.

The next stop was my favorite part of the whole trip - Afternoon Tea at the Empress Hotel! We arrived a little early, so we took it easy and strolled around the hotel and some of the gift shops. The hotel was actually built between 1904 and 1908 by the Canadian Pacific Railway. Several British monarchs and other famous people have stayed at the hotel. We had reservations for noon and were seated a little early. We started out with a cup of strawberries with cream and then our tea came. We had a choice between several options that all sounded good. I ended up getting their Empress black tea blend, which was the best tea I've ever had.

Then we got a three-tiered food tray that started with some finger sandwiches, including a curry chicken sandwich, an egg salad croissant, some kind of cucumber sandwich, and a few others. The second tier was the best part - a currant scone with cream and strawberry jam to spread on it. It tasted so good! Finally we got to the dessert and all of us were starting to get pretty full. The dessert included cheesecake, chocolate & vanilla cake with marzipan (also known as Battenberg cake), a lemon meringue pie, a chocolate truffle, and a piece of shortbread. It was quite possibly the coolest eating experience I've ever had. It was pretty pricey, but definitely worth doing once in a lifetime.

Then we went exploring more of Government street and all the retail shops, including a specialty tea shop called Murchie's and an Irish themed store. After that we split up again and Troy and I walked around more of downtown and went by a cathedral we'd seen briefly on our city tour bus the previous day. We met up with his parents again and went to eat dinner at the Spaghetti Factory before grabbing our stored luggage and taking the Victoria Clipper back to Seattle. Fortunately there were plenty of taxis waiting for us, so we took one back to our apartment so we could pick up Troy's parents' luggage before dropping them off at their airport hotel.

Victoria is a nice small city to go to, with several great things to experience such as the Butchart Gardens and Afternoon Tea. We might go back some day, but probably not any time soon. We want to go back to Vancouver first. We had a nice trip and a nice visit with Troy's parents.

We woke up really early for our ride to Victoria on the Victoria Clipper. It left at 7:30 am, so we had to be there at 6:30 am. We woke up around 5:15 am to meet Troy's parents and catch the bus to get down to Pier 69. We finally boarded and were served a decent continental breakfast which included yogurt or cereal with milk, a blueberry muffin, a small cheese wheel, crackers, and Craisins. Thankfully the weather was decent, although not totally clear. We couldn't see any of the mountains that I knew surrounded us, but at least it was partly sunny and wasn't raining.

We arrived in Victoria around 10:30 and it took forever to get through immigration. We finally got onto our tour bus around 11 and had a short tour of the city before heading to the Butchart Gardens. We happened to be there on Victoria Day, so there were lots of festivities and a parade going on near the waterfront, so the tour bus had to avoid that area unfortunately. It didn't take long to get to the gardens though. We had about two hours to meander through looking at tons and tons of nicely landscaped scrubs, bushes, and flower patches. There were tulips everywhere. At the end we stopped in the gift shop and I actually bought some souvenirs, which I don't normally do on trips. The Butchart Gardens were pretty impressive. I could have stayed there another couple of hours probably.

The tour bus dropped us off at our hotel, the Royal Scot, which is just a block away from the waterfront. It was a nice hotel, despite being a little dated. We quickly headed out again and were pretty hungry, so we went to a place I'd read about called Red Fish Blue Fish. The line to order was intimidatingly long, but we waited anyway... and waited... and waited. After about 45 minutes, we finally ordered and got our food about 15 minutes later. Troy and I shared the 2 piece halibut and chips (for $20) and it was awesome. I can't say it was worth the wait, but it came close.

After that we walked through Chinatown and the big retail area. Troy and I continued on to Beacon Hill Park while his parents took a little rest at the hotel. I enjoyed walking through the park and sitting on a bench to rest for a while. We eventually found the Mile 0 marker for the Trans-Canada Highway, which is almost a 5,000 mile long highway that stretches all across Canada to the Atlantic Ocean.

We were a little hungry by then, so we stopped for an ice cream sundae at The Soda Shoppe on Government Street. We got a scoop of cookies & cream, strawberry, and chocolate, topped with marshmallow cream, whipped cream, pecans, and two cherries. It was a little overpriced (as was pretty much everything in Victoria), but it was nice to rest a bit and the sundae actually was very good.

After that we were pretty tired, so we headed back to the hotel and played a few games of pool and shuffleboard with Troy's parents before calling it a night.

We were happy to spend time with my parents last weekend on their second visit to Seattle. They arrived last Saturday and we spent some time in town before visiting Leavenworth and then visiting Victoria.

They arrived around lunch time, so we went to Red Mill, our favorite burger place in town. While the music was rather loud this time, the food was good as usual. From there, we headed to Pioneer Square to walk around and take the Underground Tour. This was Lesley's and my third time to take the Underground Tour. Each tour guide has his or her own stories to tell and different areas to show so it hasn't gotten old yet. We also spent a good amount of time at the Gold Rush Museum, which is a rather interesting and well-done museum.

We then visited the Central Library, which is an interesting architectural landmark. We visited the red floor and traveled along the lime green escalators before going to our apartment. There, we ordered Pagliacci Pizza and watched our Netflix rental (The Verdict) together before taking my parents back to their hotel for the evening.

The next day, we met for breakfast near their hotel before heading to Leavenworth. We rented a car for a more comfortable ride for everyone and then made the 2+ hour scenic drive over the mountains to the Bavarian village east of the Cascades. We enjoyed the town and had German food for lunch before heading back and visiting Bellevue Square. That evening we had apple pie that Lesley made and had a light taco dinner at a place called Tacos Guaymas in our neighborhood.

The next couple days we visited Victoria, British Columbia, which we'll write about separately. I'm happy my parents were able to come and really enjoyed visiting with them.

We went to the annual cheese festival at Pike Place Market on Saturday. The weather was amazing all day with highs in the lower 60s and mostly sunny skies. We met some friends from church there and walked around sampling all the different cheeses. It seemed like there were fewer stands this year than prior years, but there were still plenty to choose from. I generally like milder softer cheeses and Troy likes the stronger harder cheeses. We each got a cheese we wanted and we also bought a wedge of Cougar Gold, which we buy every year. I got a cream cheese from Sierra Nevada Creamery that I also bought last year and Troy got a Fontina cheese from Oregon. There were so many different kinds I liked, but we knew we had to limit ourselves.

While at the market, we also bought some flowers and some really good Taylor's Gold pears. We also browsed through a Spanish store that had a huge selection of wines from Spain, Argentina, Portugal, and several other countries. After that we went to our friends' apartment, which is just down the street from the market and hung out for a while. We played Super Mario Brothers Wii for an hour or so. We also enjoyed looking out their windows at the amazing view of Elliott Bay and had a chance to see some of the tugboats out there for the Maritime Festival.

After a while we were a little hungry for lunch, so we decided to head down to the waterfront for a Chowder cookoff, which is part of the Maritime Festival. After trying clam chowder at 7 different restaurants, we all decided that Anthony's had the best. It wasn't too thick or thin, wasn't too buttery or peppery, it was just right. I think it will be a while before I want to have chowder again.

Once we got home, we took the car to get its annual washing and vacuuming in preparation for our visitors that are coming soon. Now it almost looks like a brand new car with a nice dark green paint job. Then we watched the Sounders-Timbers game, which ended in a tie unfortunately.

It was nice to hang out with some friends and have a chance to enjoy the nice weather on Saturday.

Not much has been going on that's been post worthy, but I thought I would mention a few things coming up over the next few months:

7th Annual Cheese Festival - We're going to the cheese festival today and might be meeting some friends there. It's free to get in and all the booths have free samples of their cheeses to taste. We're planning on buying two or three different kinds of cheese. I've been looking forward to this for months.

Visitors - Troy's parents are visiting us very soon and we're planning on going to Leavenworth, WA and Victoria, British Columbia. We've never been to Victoria, but I've heard a lot of good things about it, especially the Butchart Gardens. They'll also get to see our new apartment and neighborhood.

Seattle International Film Festival (SIFF) - Seattle has one of the best film festivals in the country. We've gone to a couple movies every year during the month-long event. Not sure what we'll see this year, but there's tons of options to choose from.

Northwest Folklife Festival - This happens on Memorial Day weekend at the Seattle Center. Lots of good food is available, as well as crafts, live music, and other things going on.

Mariners game - We'll be going to the Memorial Day game against the Orioles. We haven't been to a baseball game yet this season, so it should be fun. Hopefully the weather is much nicer by then.

Sounders-Whitecaps game - We'll be going to the first regular season match between the Sounders and the Whitecaps on June 11. The Sounders, Portland Timbers, and Vancouver Whitecaps will probably form a strong rivalry due to their close proximity to each other in the region.

More visitors - My parents and Uncle will be visiting us in mid-June for about 5 days. We're planning on going to a Mariners game and also scenic Deception Pass. I'm really looking forward to hanging out with them and showing them our apartment.

Bite of Seattle - This is probably my favorite Seattle festival. Last year we were able to go with our visiting friends and had a lot of fun. It's similar to Folklife, except even more restaurants and types of food to choose from. We'll be going to this in mid-July.

Hiking? - Hopefully we'll start hiking more as the weather gets better. We've had a really cold, wet spring so far, with high temperatures well below normal. My foot is also slowly improving, so it will be nice to hike again. Hopefully I won't have to wear my night splint forever.

So, we'll be pretty busy the next couple of months and it will be nice to have visitors. The summers are always the best time of the year in Seattle.

We posted recently about our favorite places for Latin American food and since then have been to another place called Laredo's. The ambiance in this place reminded me very much of Texas and the food was pretty good too. This was the closest to Tex-Mex that I've had here. The first important step to good Tex-Mex is good chips and salsa and Laredo's had that. We also had an avocado margarita, which is something I hadn't heard of before, but tasted pretty much like a regular margarita. I had some kind of taco dish and Lesley had enchiladas, both of which came with pinto beans and rice. Overall the food was pretty good and I'm looking forward to going back.

Our last day in San Francisco began with drizzly weather, very Seattle-like. Appropriately, Lesley and I started the day at Starbucks. We didn't really have any plans for the morning. We walked around Union Square and then took the streetcar down to the Ferry building. On the way back, we stopped at a cool toy store, and then went to the mall downtown.

Since we had to check out of our hotel, we dropped off our bags at our friend's apartment. Our friend wasn't feeling particularly well, so Lesley and I went to a sandwich shop in the Castro. It had apparently changed locations and the old address didn't show the new address, so it took us a little while to find it. We took our sandwiches to nearby Dolores Park and fortunately by this time the rain had stopped and the sky had started to clear up. It was still quite windy, so we had to keep our food from blowing away. Our sandwiches were pretty good.

After lunch, we walked to the Mission district. The weather by this time was beautifully sunny and the walk was very pleasant. We walked a ways down Mission St and our friend met up with us. We then took a bus over to the Noe Valley to walk around some more historic San Francisco homes. We had a very nice walk and then stopped for a drink before heading back in the direction of our friend's apartment. We had some frozen yogurt before getting our bags from our friend's apartment and saying goodbye. It was unfortunate that our friend had felt sick during the trip, but we still were able to have a good time together.

We took BART to the airport. Our plane was flying out of a new terminal, which had better food than typical airport fast food. We shared a tomato bisque soup, which was actually not bad, before heading back to Seattle.

One aspect of unfortunate timing was that both Lesley and our friend happened to be feeling a little sick during our visit. While we were still able to get out and do a lot of things, we had been taking things a little easy. Unfortunately, people wasn't feeling well enough to attend a Easter Sunday church service.

Later, Lesley and I did stroll through Chinatown as well as through North Beach. We found an Italian place for lunch in North Beach, though were hoping to be a little more impressed by the food.

After lunch, we took a couple buses to get to the upscale neighborhood of Nob Hill. San Francisco has a very good public transportation system and maps are posted at many of the bus stops, which helped us find our way around. Also, unlike Seattle, buses come very frequently, it seems like our average wait time for a bus was under 5 minutes.

We walked around Nob Hill, enjoying the upscale atmosphere. We ran across a classic car show near the Fairmont hotel. After that, we found the nearby Cable Car Museum, which was actually pretty interesting. The cable car system is operated by the motors in that building, which keep the cables moving at around 10 mph throughout the city. The museum also showed how the cable cars work and told the history of the cable cars. There used to be a lot more cable car lines operated by different companies, but the great fire of 1906 destroyed most of them. Later, the whole system was in danger of being scrapped in the name of progress, but was saved due to the work of citizen activists.

After this, we met up with our friend and his girlfriend at the grocery store to buy food for Easter dinner. Our friend's girlfriend made most of the food and we had a nice dinner with green beans, carrots, potatoes, and chicken.

We hung out at our friend's apartment the rest of the day and played some Mario Kart, then played Ticket to Ride again, as well as a game of Uno. This day was probably my favorite day of the trip thanks to the good weather and fun Lesley and I had, as well as the friendly Easter dinner we had.

Saturday morning we had a small bite to eat from the hotel continental breakfast and headed out to Golden Gate Park to see the Conservatory of Flowers. The current exhibit was called "Wicked Plants: Botanical Rogues and Assassins" and they had all kinds of poisonous or otherwise deadly plants such as poison ivy, the tobacco plant, and others. It was very interesting reading all the stories about each of the plants and how they killed people over the past 150 years. The rest of the conservatory was pretty cool too, with all kinds of weird looking leaves and flowers. We saw some lily pads that were probably 2 feet wide that were pretty cool.

We continued walking through Golden Gate Park and enjoyed the great weather. It was mostly sunny and in the 60s. After the park, we took the bus to the Golden Gate Bridge. It was really crowded, but once we got out onto the bridge the people thinned out. We walked about halfway across and were able to see pretty far in every direction. Last time we were here, it was foggy all around us and we couldn't hardly see anything. Going to the Golden Gate Bridge is probably my favorite thing to do in San Francisco.

It was about time for lunch, so we headed to Fisherman's Wharf by bus and ate at Boudin. Their sourdough bread bowls with clam chowder and tomato bisque soup were excellent. Not too far from there was a place called Musée Mécanique where they had all kinds of old arcade and carnival games. Some looked to be almost 100 years old. We played a few of them, including an Indiana Jones pinball machine.

We walked over to Ghirardelli Square next and ate an ice cream sundae called "The Cable Car" while sitting on a bench looking out to the bay. It had three scoops of ice cream - rocky road, vanilla chocolate chip, and chocolate - topped with whipped cream, nuts, hot fudge, a cherry, and a milk chocolate square bar. It was really good.

After that we walked along the pier and eventually made our way to the Embarcadero via a historic streetcar. AT&T Park where the Giants play wasn't too far away, so we decided to go check it out to see if there was anything new on or near the stadium about them being World Series champs. We actually showed up just after a game had ended, so the place was swarming with orange and black. We didn't hang around too long because of the crowds, so we headed on back to the hotel to rest a bit.

We wanted to go to an A's game since we'd already been to a Giants game the last time we came here. Unfortunately the A's were out of town - oddly enough playing in Seattle, so we didn't see any baseball games.

We ate dinner at a place our friend recommended that was really close to our hotel called Bangkok Noodles & Thai. After dinner we went to hang out with our friends and played a few games of Mario Kart. We also played two new games called Carcassonne and Quiddler.

The first thing we did Friday morning was ride the cable car, which picked us up at the end of the Powell-Hyde/Powell-Mason line, less than 2 blocks from our hotel. It was pretty full and we were stuck inside the car, so we didn't have much of a chance to look out of the car. We were trying to get to Mama's, a breakfast cafe I'd heard about located in North Beach. We accidentally took the cable car that went farther west, so we got off at the top of Nob Hill and walked down to Washington Square to the east. The Powell-Mason cable car would have taken us almost straight there.

We gradually made our way to the restaurant and the line of people out the door was almost too intimidating. We decided to stick it out and waited almost an hour in line, which seemed really long despite getting there around 9am on a weekday. While I waited in line, Troy explored the neighborhood a little bit and even went up to the steps of Coit Tower. Our friend met us there for breakfast, which turned out to be pretty good and not too expensive. I had an omlette and Troy had the french toast sampler with fruit. It was a neat little restaurant, but I can't say I'd go out of my way to eat there again.

After breakfast, we continued exploring North Beach, which is a neighborhood we didn't visit at all on our last trip. It was probably my favorite neighborhood we visited. There was so much to look at and all the cafes looked cool. Several of them had outdoor sidewalk seating. We stopped briefly at a bookstore and a couple ornate cathedrals.

The next stop was Lombard Street, the crookedest street in the world. We went to it on the last trip, but only at night, so we couldn't really see it that well. Troy and I walked all the way to the top and took some pictures of the nice view. It was pretty crowded with tourists, so we didn't stay too long.

We were all pretty tired after all that walking, so we decided to head back to our friend's apartment. After visiting a little, we decided to play a board game called Ticket to Ride. Basically it's a game where you try to claim different train routes displayed on a US and Canada map. Major cities are linked by anywhere from 1 to 6 car-length trains of different colors. You get extra points for the longest train and for completing routes that you receive randomly at the start of the game. For example, I got a route card for New York City to Atlanta (with stops along the way) and it took me 3 yellow cars, 2 black cars, and 2 red cars. You can only draw two train car cards per turn and you have to wait until you have enough cards of the same color car before you can turn them in and claim a route. It took me a while to figure out a strategy. Troy eventually won after playing about an hour.

We waited a while for our friend's girlfriend to get home and ordered pizza for dinner from a place nearby. We took it easy the rest of the night and went back to our hotel a little early to rest up for the next day.

Living on the West Coast means that we're able to visit other cities on the West Coast and flights cost less for us than for much of the country. We have a good friend who lives in San Francisco, so we wanted to visit him again. We last visited him more than two and a half years ago, so we thought it'd be good to go to San Francisco again.

We had been looking for airfare for several weeks and the prices kept rising after we started looking. Fortunately, a new flight was made available at a good time, so we were able to book our tickets and book a hotel near Union Square.

Since we have a limited amount of time off, we planned our trip over a weekend and flew out from work on Thursday after work. We grabbed a bite to eat at Seatac and then flew out via Virgin Airlines. The flight was quite full and departed late from the gate for some reason. Then, when we were about ready to take off, we had to turn around because a person in the exit row had taken a sleeping pill or something. I'm not really sure what the deal was, but we arrived in SF like an hour late.

Otherwise, the flight was good. Every seat had a screen for watching certain TV shows or listening to music for free. They also had movies and other entertainment you could purchase to watch. We enjoyed watching some Comedy Central, which made the flight go by much more quickly.

After we landed, we took the shuttle to the BART station and then took BART to our hotel and prepared for the next few days in the city.

I really like carrot cake, it's probably my favorite kind of cake after chocolate. I decided to make one from scratch last Saturday and used a recipe from AllRecipes.com. It said it would make two 10" round layers, and I only have 9" pans, so I modified the recipe and cut it to 12 servings instead of 16. It was quite a lot of work, especially shredding the carrots. That part alone took over an hour. My cousin said I need to invest in a food processor, which is definitely true.

After shredding the carrots, the rest was pretty easy. I beat the eggs, added sugar and oil, mixed in the flour/spice mixture and added the walnuts. I was pouring it in the pans when Troy realized I hadn't added the raisins, which would have been disastrous. Not really, but it would have been irritating to do all that work and forget an ingredient. So I mixed them in as best I could once the batter was in the pans.

I baked it for the original amount of time, not realizing that I should reduce the cook time because I reduced the recipe size. It came out a little overcooked and crusty, which was disappointing at the time.

I made my own cream cheese frosting, which was much easier than I thought. It only requires butter, cream cheese, powdered sugar, and a little vanilla. I went ahead and iced the cake and we both had a piece. It was ok, but not as good as I was hoping for.

So I covered it and put it in the fridge. Then on Sunday we had some more of it and it was actually a lot better. I guess the icing helped soften it and keep some moisture in it. It's actually pretty good. Perhaps I'll go to all the trouble again and reduce the cook time next time. It wasn't the best carrot cake I've had, but it was comparable.

Our diet back in Texas was made up of a lot of Latin flavors, especially Tex-Mex. Here, Mexican food is a little harder to come by, but we've gotten around to a few places. Lesley's parents are visiting us soon and are interested in trying Mexican food, so we're trying to figure out where to take them. Here are the places Lesley and I have tried that serve food from Spanish-speaking countries, ordered basically from our favorite to least favorite:

• Paseo - Caribbean sandwich shop that was worth the 45 minute wait. The last time I went, I had possibly the second best sandwich in my life, having had the best one on my previous visit.


• La Carta de Oaxaca - Mexican food that was at one time my favorite restaurant in Seattle. No longer impresses me, but serves good food with the flavors of southern Mexico.


• La Isla - Puerto Rican food. Like most places to eat in Seattle, it's not a bargain. Still it has good food.


• Cactus - Northwest-inspired Tex-Mex style food, with dishes like butternut squash enchiladas. I wasn't particularly impressed, but the food was pretty good and I would try it again.


• Mexico - Lesley has been here and says it's "decent, but kind of overpriced, and the service is kind of slow." That describes pretty much every other place on the list, but Mexico's claim to fame is that they give you free chips and salsa. In Texas, that's normal. In Seattle, that's remarkable.


• El Mestizo - We walked here a few weeks ago. We weren't thrilled with Lesley's mole enchiladas, but that's probably because neither of us is a big fan of mole. The service was slow, but I thought the food had pretty good flavor and would probably give it another try.


• Taqueria El Rinconsito - Outside the city limits where more people of Mexican and Central American origin live. An inexpensive fast-food style place that serves dishes covered with cheese and, unlike everything else on this list, accompanied them with fried rice and refried pinto beans on the side, something that is the standard of Tex-Mex. I liked it and would go back.


• Dos Amigos - Lesley went there once and doesn't remember being impressed. It's similar to Rosa's Cafe in DFW, so fairly inexpensive and nothing too special.


• Agua Verde - One of the first Mexican places I tried in Seattle on the lake near UW. Perhaps I went in with unfair expectations, but their margaritas were too lime-flavored and the food was mediocre. Next time I'll skip the food and just rent a kayak, which is what they're better known for.

Anyway, we hope to try a few more places over the next few weeks, but aren't expecting any of them to blow us away. Still, it's nice that we've found at least a few places we like.

This past week we have been busy planning a few upcoming trips. First, we are planning to visit our friend in San Francisco. We had a good visit with him a couple years ago and enjoyed the city immensely, so we've wanted to go back. While driving to San Francisco would take like 13 hours, it's not too long or expensive of a flight, so I'm glad we'll be able to go again to spend more time with our friend and experience more of the city. We weren't sure if we'd be able to do this trip, as airfare prices had risen by almost $100 since we started looking. Fortunately, we caught a break, and seem to have gotten a good deal on a hotel. We'll be going within a month from now.

We're also planning a big national park road trip this summer. We'll be driving to three national parks: Glacier, Yellowstone, and Grand Tetons. We really enjoyed our road trip up here from Texas and haven't gone on another one since then. This drive will be about as long of a drive as that road trip and hopefully it will be as good. Hotels in the national parks had already started selling out, so we had to book this one quickly to be able to go. There aren't very many hotels in the parks and the ones that are there are often rather dated and due to the high demand prices aren't as cheap as we'd hoped. We're really hoping to be able to do this trip with some friends as well, but regardless it should be fun.

Each of our parents will be visiting us in the next few months, too, so we've been planning some activities around that as well. It seems like we'll have more opportunities this year to spend time with family and some of our good friends from Texas than we have the past couple years, so I'm excited about that and about these trips coming up.

So we've been in our new apartment for a over a month now. Our boxes have all been out of the way for a few weeks and while there is some furniture and other decorations that we're interested in, we're completely settled in now.

I'd say that living in a new place has been a nice change with some minor advantages and drawbacks. The larger size of the unit was one reason we moved, and while the layout is not as ideal as at our older, smaller apartment, the bigger living area and separate bedroom is nice. The way we have things arranged makes it so that we eat at our dining table a lot more than we did at our old place, so that's kind of nice.

I did like getting the afternoon sun at our old place, and we haven't gotten as much sunlight in our unit here, but that's more due to the weather. When the sun is out, we get enough light in here. Our view isn't as great as from our old place, and there are other apartments across the alley so we do keep our blinds closed more often.

The office staff and maintenance here have been good and things have been taken care of quickly.

While I'd rather not have to use our heater, standing in front of the heater is a nice way to warm up.

The bathroom is small, but we've found a pretty good way to organize everything and Lesley has gotten used to the size. The washer and dryer are smaller than at our old place, so she has been doing laundry a lot more often here.

We do like our new neighborhood. I really like the historic residential area immediately around us. Also, I've enjoyed being able to walk to the grocery store and we haven't had any problems with that. The main commercial streets nearby aren't particularly clean, but there are lots of places to eat along them and we've barely tried any so far. The nicer weather that will be coming up will hopefully give us more of a chance to explore our neighborhood, so I'm looking forward to that.

Our commutes to work aren't substantially different. Lesley's walk is a little longer, but my overall commute time is a little shorter. Most of our walk is through downtown, so that makes it more interesting, though more difficult to jaywalk. The walk home from the bus for me has been a little annoying because the signals aren't synced particularly well.

Overall, there's nothing too different about living here versus at our old place, and it's just kind of fun living somewhere different.