A weekend in Seattle

Pike Market Place, downtown Seattle

We have never visited Seattle before. We stopped over briefly for a coffee break on our road trip to Oregon but that was it. It is kind of crazy because we have lived in the Vancouver area for 9 years now and Seattle is only a 2 hour drive away.

I'm reporting our trip late since it was a week ago that it happened. I'll write more in an upcoming post to explain why I have taken so long to blog about it.

I had a bunch of stores I wanted to visit and a list of restaurants for use to try close to our hotel. The main thing I wanted to check out downtown was the Pike Market Place. We went there and hung around for 2 1/2 hours. I couldn't believe how expensive the parking was! We parked at the City Target and the parking was $18. I made myself spend $20 at Target so that they would reimburse us for the first hour of parking. At least! Oh my gosh.

Original Starbucks, Seattle

Pike Market Place was cool. The flowers (fresh or dried) were the best buy I think. If I lived there, I would totally buy some. Everything else was kind of expensive. There were lots of cool stuff though.  We saw the original Starbucks but there was a HUGE lineup so we didn't bother.

We stayed at a hotel in the University district, which was just a 10 minute drive from downtown. Apparently, it was a hip neighborhood with lots of vegan cafes and restaurants. I knew Jean-Louis would be happy :) We had some hotel problems, having booked through Hotwire for the first time but in the end it worked out for us. We were within walking distance to the University Village, which was totally awesome. I loved that place! So many of my favorite stores were there and right next to each other too. The layout was fabulous because when you enter, you can see the stores right there, without looking up a directory.

After shopping, we dined at VeggieGrill, also nearby in the University Village. It was all vegan and we ate until we couldn't walk anymore. You could tell it was not real meat but the quality was so much better than what you could buy at the grocery store. Plus, it was so cheap! We stuffed ourselves silly for just $35. Tristan got the best deal of all for being a kid. For just $5.99, he got a main dish (Mac & Cheese), a side (sweet potato fries), a dessert (chocolate pudding), and a drink (soy milk). The service was excellent too. Once we ordered, paid for our food and sat down, I barely had time to go wash my hands and Tristan's hands before all the food arrived. They messed up brought us an extra order of buffalo wings and said we could just eat it anyway. Yay! Now these were vegan chicken strips so they were actually really filling. Big, no bones, all "meat," if you know what I mean :) It was all good. I read good things about the place but I was still a bit skeptic. Next time we are back in Seattle, we will definitely stop by again!

The main reason we wanted to go to Seattle was to visit the Museum of Flight. Jean-Louis is a plane geek and Tristan is a little boy so he would definitely love seeing planes and other flying vehicles. I wasn't that interested but if I didn't have to pay to go, then I wouldn't have mind tagging along. We got to use our Entertainment book coupon from Vancouver for the Museum of Flight in Seattle. Cool, right? I think it's the first time they included a few Seattle coupons in the Vancouver book. It was a 2 for 1 deal so I was basically free :)

The Museum of Flight was really cool actually. We got to go in several planes, including an Air Force One for the President of the USA. That's some serious perk for a President! The Museum was really big and although we spent around 3 or 4 hours there, we couldn't do much since we had to chase Tristan around. Two hours would have been plenty for our first visit but since we stayed so long, we all got a bit cranky near the end :( That weekend we went it was very crowded too since they had a Halloween event. We got Tristan to dress up in costume to join in on the fun. There were so many kids in costumes there, some ridiculously great costumes too. Surprisingly, Tristan was the only Darth Vader. There were lots of crafts and games but he wasn't too interested. Boo :( Tristan didn't sleep enough the night before and he totally crashed when we left the place. Instead of stopping for lunch, we decided to just drive straight to Bellingham for a Trader Joe's stop and then home to Vancouver. The border wait at Blaine was around 10-15 minutes, which was great. On top of that, we had a super easy customs guy. I don't think we have ever encountered such a nice and easy guy. We had a bad experience in the past where we were booted out of our car and sent inside to pay duties for things we bought. We're still sort of new at this so every time we cross the border by car I get super nervous.

We sure picked the right weekend to go over. I had a feeling a lot of people wanted to stay put the weekend before Halloween, which was why I chose to go then. Overall, it was a great trip and we got to do some serious power shopping. I got plenty of stuff for Tristan's upcoming birthday party too :) I can definitely see us going over again. Maybe when the weather improves.

We loved Florence and Tuscany

Florence

There are three words that come to mind when I think about Florence: art, architecture, and leather. Walking in the city was like visiting an outdoor museum. It is the city for art lovers! The architecture was stunning and a lot of it was in color, which surprised me. Paris architecture is beautiful too but most of it is black and white. If you like leather, you will find leather stores splattered throughout the city, as well as cheaper leather goods in the outside market. My sophisticated mother-in-law bought a leather bag at one of the stores. I bought mine at the market :) That's how NOT sophisticated I am! But seriously, the bags are nice and the market prices are a bargain. I didn't even need another bag but I just couldn't pass the opportunity to buy one being in Florence. There are bags everywhere! Ladies be warned!

 

We only went to one museum since we didn't think Tristan was going to like it much. We went to the Galleria degli Uffizi, which is the main art museum there. Nearly everything in the museum is considered a masterpiece coming from famous artists such as Michelangelo, Giotto, Botticelli, Raphael, Leonardo di Vinci, etc. We were right. Tristan couldn't have cared less and we had to carry him a lot to prevent him from touching everything. The art was impressive and so were some of the frames holding them. We got to look at pretty much everything but just not in detail.

We spent two full days inside Florence. Florence was beautiful. Florence was also super busy and noisy. It was such a relief to go back to our quiet farmhouse at the end of the day.

Siena

Siena is an old town in the Chianti region of Tuscany. It actually ended up being one of my favorite towns in Tuscany. Once again, the architecture was stunning. The main duomo there was smaller than the one in Florence. Walking around the town reminded me of old Italy. There was the Romanesque church, the Piazza del Campo, the great food and the candy and wine stores. It was just a charming little town. The day we went to Siena was also the day we were supposed to do San Gimignano but we ran out of time. I was totally bummed:(

Pisa

The main attraction in Pisa was the Leaning Tower. It was cool to see. The town has a big university by the river but it wasn't as nice as Siena. There were two good restaurants I noted down but when we finally found them, they were closed. It wasn't even a Sunday. Maybe they just open for dinner. We ended up settling for mediocre food.

On the way home, we stopped by the Amedei chocolate factory. Amedei is home to the world's greatest chocolates. I have been tweeting about Amedei for awhile now and I already blogged about it over at Swoon For Food so if you like chocolate, you can read more about it there :)

Lucca & Viareggio

Lucca is a walled city and that alone made it interesting. There were few cars inside the city but there were cyclists everywhere! The wall was actually a walkway and cyclists, runners, and walkers strolled up there all around the city. We totally wanted to walk around up there but the fastest way was to rent bikes. We were only planning to visit Lucca for a couple of hours. We ended up renting one of these, which we thought was way cooler. It allowed us all to be closer together and it was not built for speed so it was good to take Tristan on it too.

We made the mistake of leaving the wall and then roaming around the city aimlessly with it. We totally got lost but luckily we could have cycled all the way in any direction and hit the wall again. We just had to find an entrance point and go back up the wall. Unfortunately, our bike time was almost up so we ended up racing in lightning speed past everyone just to make it back to the rental place on time. Remember how I said the thing was not built for speed? We went so fast, we thought the bolts were going to come off. Piece of junk. Or maybe it was us abusing it. Anyhow it was totally fun :)

Viareggio was a disappointment. We brought bathing suits but didn't know they built this whole industry around the beach. You had to pay for a change room in order to swim at the beach. Since it was near the end of the day it would have been 10 or 15 Euros for our group. Every part of the beach was blocked off by restaurants and businesses that collected fees for access. We ended up just going in to sit down for a drink. We decided not to swim after looking in the water. It was somewhat dirty and we only had maybe 30 minutes to 1 hour to swim before going home. The beach was huge though. Thousands of lawn chairs or sunbathing chairs were lined up along the beach leading up to the water. It's just too bad you had to pay for all that. It's sad really.

Greve in Chianti

The day we drove to Siena through the small countryside road, we didn't have time to stop in Greve. We decided to create a spare day in our schedule to go shopping and hang out at the farm. On this day we drove to Greve to taste and buy wine. I don't drink much myself but if you are ever in Tuscany, tasting wine is just one of those things you need to do. We also visited a nearby big grocery store. We ended up buying a lot of our food souvenirs there and I also shopped for things I needed to cook that day. We got plenty of rest and I made us a lovely pasta dinner at the farmhouse. For not doing much, that day ended up being a really nice day.

Places on my original agenda that we didn't visit were San Gimignano, as mentioned above, and Cinque Terre. We simply did not have enough time. If it were just the three of us, we probably would have done everything but we were traveling with my parents-in-law too. They were pretty tired from everything we already did. They were not used to traveling at all and it totally showed. I'm still bummed about Cinque Terre but it was too far and I was getting sick of being in the car as well. Traveling to a new foreign city with a 3 year old and seniors was no easy task either. Overall, I think we still had a great time in Tuscany. Weather-wise spring time was definitely the best time to visit!

Random photos of Toulon from our past trip

As you may be aware, we went to France and Italy a few weeks ago. Besides posting pictures of our farmhouse and the countryside of Tuscany, I haven't posted a thing from France or the rest of Tuscany. To be honest, I didn't know what to do next. I could probably easily do another six posts on our trip but so much time has passed now and I just want to share a bit more and then move on. There are so many other things going on and I'm falling very behind! :( To complete my documentation of our past vacation, I will do this post and one more after this. They say a picture is worth a thousand words so I think the best way to share our experience is through some of the pictures we took.

Omg. There are so many pictures! I am just overwhelmed. Over 1500 pictures were taken! This is part of the reason why I have been taking so long with these blog posts. Wouldn't you procrastinate too? How do I share just a few pictures when there are probably 1000 good ones? Omg.

We stayed in Toulon for a long time because Tristan's grandparents lived there, as well as his great grandpa. Our only plan in Toulon was to see relatives and hang out with them as much as possible. We had no plans to go anywhere or do anything in particular. When there was nobody left to see, we actually found ourselves bored silly. We spend countless hours playing with Tristan, going for walks, and watching television at his great grandpa's house. Jean-Louis even went out for runs while Tristan and I sat around home waiting for him.

Tristan got to see his family a lot but most of the time, it was just the three of us alone doing things like playing and walking into town. It actually made us notice even more how the South of France really isn't kid-friendly at all. It's better than Paris perhaps. Besides the beach and playground near the beach, there is nothing much else to do. As far as I know, there are only two public playgrounds. One is a 25 minute walk and the other is about a 1 hour walk. None of them have any shade. Most playgrounds are inside of schools, which are gated and locked. We went to the same playground over and over and I was getting so sick of it. Luckily, it was a nice playground. The lack of playgrounds is one thing and the lack of child-friendly restaurants is another. Tristan is a good eater and is well behaved when we dine out so it isn't ever really a big deal for us. When Tristan's little cousins came to visit though, we almost went to Ikea for a family lunch! It was the closest thing they could come up with that was kid-friendly and that wouldn't cost a fortune. In the end, we decided it was going to be too busy at Ikea so we settled for fast Chinese food in town. Oh, the horror. It was as yucky as I had expected. Seriously.

Tristan got to hang out and bond with his French family and that was the most important. As an added bonus, we also took some great photos of him with his grandparents, great grandpa, and his little cousins. He got along so well with his three girl cousins! It was so cute :) It was also great to see people our age with little kids too who we could hang out with.

What a kid's dish looks like in France

Tuna & pasta

Salmon & fries

We stayed at a farmhouse in Tuscany for a week

This past trip to France, we decided to stay an extra week and go somewhere new with my parents-in-law. We threw some ideas around like Berlin, somewhere in Austria, somewhere in Portugal, Florence, Corsica (just for Tristan really), Crete, and Prague. In the end, Florence with the surrounding area in Tuscany won. Florence was initially suggested by my mother-in-law so I'm glad she was pleased :)

After some research, I found this great farmhouse just 20 minutes from Florence. The idea was to drive down to Florence from the South of France so we needed a place that had safe parking for our car. Parking is both a nightmare and in short supply inside Florence. When I saw the farmhouse, I knew it was perfect! When we arrived it was exactly what I had imagined it would be. There were a few things I wish were different about our stay but overall, it was great! I just wrote a review for the farmhouse today and I think I would go back if we were to return to Florence again.

The farm and the surrounding area was what I had always pictured Tuscany to be. Rolling hills of Chianti vineyards, olive groves, green grass, fruit trees, and just a peaceful countryside setting. We had donkeys nearby the shared swimming pool area and chickens and roosters in another farm nearby. I heard the roosters as early as 5AM. Of course with farm life also comes bugs, lizards, and mosquitoes. The first two nights I couldn't sleep because mosquitoes were buzzing in my ear all night. I slept under the covers but it was hard to breathe and it was hot! During the week we were in Tuscany, the temperature was 25-29C during the day. It didn't rain at all until after we left.

 

Each day we took road trips to nearby cities to visit other parts of Tuscany and we spent two days inside Florence. Our farm was in a great location to do all of this. For Florence, we would drive 2 minutes to Sieci, park our car all day there and take the train into the city. It was only 2 Euros and the train only took 20 minutes. We were told that parking was difficult and you could easily pay 40 Euros a day for parking. Parking at the train station in Sieci was free. It was somewhat of a relief to return back to the quiet farmhouse after a full day in a hustling downtown Florence.

Most evenings we would make it back to the farmhouse and have a light dinner outside in our own private patio. It was warm and we had a beautiful view of the Tuscan hills. It was June and the sun didn't set until late. When the meal was done and we cleared the table, Tristan would run around and play near the farmhouse with Jean-Louis. Then the moon would rise and we would take pictures of it. Why not, hey? :)

I was so excited about our trip when I first rented the farmhouse. Now that we have stayed there, I have to say it really was the best decision. Our experience of Florence and Tuscany would have been very different had we stayed at a hotel in the city center of Florence. It really was countryside bliss :)