In the morning, we all went down for breakfast. At first we tried to ignore each other, so that it er, wouldn't be so suspicious that we were all in the same room. After a while we couldn't take it and started discussing our plans. Poor gabriel was sitting alone at a table. And we didn't talk to him from the beginning to the end, cos it was like how weird to just suddenly talk to him after ignoring him for so long. Haha.. Damn nonsensical. Well Danny was quite smart and gave the guy a $10 tip for tolerating our nonsense and keeping quiet about it.
Pike's Place Market
Next we were off to Pike's Place Market. In the hopes that it was open and that there were actually people around. Luckily there were! We were worried that u know it was so cold that no fishermen would be out at sea and all. When we reached, the market was just opening, and you could see it slowly come to life. People were just opening their booths, and it was interesting to see the market unfold before you.
Check these out.. they are the CHEEKs of a fish. huge hor? the lobsters looked damn good.. and in the top left corner of the pic [this feels like english oral exam in sec sch haha] are SCALLOPS. humongous lah!
This guy played very good music.. from a cute piano!
The following are 'Cooked Dungeness Crabs'. The guy was happily opening them and allowing us to sample.. tasted really good! Liling and me promptly brought one at $15 to share w everyone.. Yummilicious. This was from the store right at the main entrance of the market, and the people shout and sing whenever you buy something. So when we buy a crab they go 'One Crab!' and they throw the crab around.
When pb told me about this I actually imagined it to be a lot grander, a lot of fishermen throwing fish around as they work and singing.. Haiya, so it's only the fishmonger who sings, ONLY when you buy stuff from them. Bleah. kinda cheated!
Oh, they say that the crab was put there for 3 days le =p but it still tasted superb, so .. whatever!
Next I saw this cute nut store.. selling all sorts of diff flavoured peanuts. I bought $5 worth of Caramel Cashews and Jubee Macadamia. Total rip off. And I also found the guy kinda rude. The nuts were way too sweet.. I didn't finish them and fed them to the rest of the guys.
The following store sold dried fruits.. I had to stop myself from buying all these nonsense. Haha. I took the above self portrait in front of this store, and I bet the lady was laughing at me.. Hehe. Gabriel took a sample from the lady and I saw him chewing on it.. Suddenly he put a piece of dried fruit on my hand to exchange for my nuts. haha it looked like he chew chew chew then suddenly give me. so nonsense.
I was walking around randomly when I noticed these cute little things. Then I realised that the guy in front of me was Vincent! Haha. The lady picked one up at started playing a melody with it. Freaking cute!! They are called ocarinas.. Very expensive, but I was a gone case right after she played a few melodies.
I know it was expensive but it was about the way she sold it, how she looked so happy playing it and how she seemed proud of the craft. She says that it's made by a couple of her friends a couple of hours away from seattle.
Mark was saying that ebay sure got. And liling says she saw tonnes of these in China. hhaha.. but since i'm not going to china soon.. heehee. I thought it would be a cute ornament, and summore u can pick it up and play. I love it. So did vincent so we tried bargaining a bit, and each bought one. Mine's a medium size and his is a small, so mine plays a more mellow sound compared to his.
Later found some on the internet that were way cheaper.. but luckily don't have my shape. Haha. I've been irritating my room mate by playing squidward-ly tunes hahha. There are lots of constraints since only one octave can be played haha but it's still really really cute. loves it.
We walked around a little.. That's some dried fruit thing courtesy of Elvin. I was in a toy shop.. And they sold really cute things like a ball which changed colour when you threw it up and down [haha an old lady saw me playing with it and she decided to buy 3 for her grandsons or something!] I was extremely tempted to buy this calendar whose pages you could fold into origami daily.. and even , kirigami [even prettier.. can cut out into pretty shapes and all] but i had to stop myself from spending money on nonsense.
First Starbucks
Next we went to the First STARBUCKS ever!!! at 1912 Pike Place. There were loads of people there and we went in to get our nice hot drinks. Meanwhile weijie was in the car making sure we didn't get any tickets... haha so wei da.
I had seen the logo before in some art in the market.. and I thought it was a parody of starbucks.. little did i know that it WAS the starbucks logo! so ugly lah!
With my very sexy rockwell jacket. haha. dunno why vincent do C.. machiam C-block like that.
my favourite starbucks drink.. caramel macchiato!
We then went down to mac donalds near the space needle for lunch. i think this is my first filet o fish in america.
Chittenden Locks
Locks are basically elevators for boats. When a boat needs to travel up stream, they go into this contraption which locks the water out, and then water from the higher region is let in, thus the boat will move up until the level of the higher region. Kinda interesting to look at.
Weijie [or was it mark] was asking why do they have to build it in the first place. The water should become level anyway if it wasn't there. It's not like it's a dam or something. Wah. so cheem. I have no idea either.
There was this 'fish ladder' thing to help the salmon swim upstream! They even had a viewing gallery where you could observe it. Damn cool.. a little murky though. Too bad it wasn't salmon season.. there were only a couple of chinooks that were too old and weak to make their way up.
Oh, it was quite funny that there were erm, salmon cook books at the tourist shop. wth?
On the way there, we saw this bridge opening up.. I've seen this in chicago so i didn't find it entirely exciting, but stupid weijie was making a lot of noise about how cool it is.. haha and he made it seem a lot more fun and happening than it really was. bth!
We braved the crazy rainy weather just to check it out.
Entrance to the fish ladder viewing place
The lazy chinook. Damn big lah.
Fish Ladder
The locks which control the water level
picked up a pretty leaf which i gave neisha later on, but was left to die in the van in the end ha.
We then rushed down to the airport to send Gabriel off.. aiyoh i think gabe is damn hardworking.. must rush back so that he doesn't miss lessons! Then it was time to go for the Experience Music Project near the space needle where the rest had already spent the whole afternoon at.
But, before going there, we decided that the pike place crabs were too delicious to let go of.. and when I said 'We should have crabs and beer for supper tonight' it became an unanimous decision immediately. Heehee.. So we drove back to pikeplace market and bought 3 crabs for only 30+.. It was a correct choice to not buy from that first stall at the entrance who made a lot of noise. It also saves you time cos they don't take so much time to sing and throw the crab and all.
Experience Music Project
By the time we reached the EMP thing, it was very late already.. and we still had to wait for the rest to come down with the coupons which gave us $3 off. It seemed hard to tear them away from the exhibit! So in the end we only had 1.5 hours to tour the place.
We skipped all the exhibits and headed straight for the hands on labs. Damn nonsense, paying $16 to go into the jam studios to make lots of noise. Heh. It was really fun, they even let u record your own music and u can buy the cd after that. We basically went into the jam studio and made lots of noise by plonking on the guitars, keyboard, drums.. and of course, weijie our lead singer. When we left that studio, there was a line outside, and the lady in front of the queue like, smiled at us. Later on we realised that the studio wasn't sound proof so.. our beautiful *cough* music was heard by all. Man.
There was also a small studio which let u 'record your own concert, complete with fans'. Haha.. it's like a little stage.. and you don't have to know any music, just go out there and pretend. too bad we couldn't afford to buy the video/photo. Pretty cool, we looked quite professional lah. Vincent on guitar, liling on keyboard, mark on drums, weijie lead singer and me on the tambourine.. hahaha.. I also had to sing lah so embarrassing. i looked damn stupid in the video.
Our band was called.. Majulah Singapura. Cool huh. at the end of it they print 'concert tickets' for you, and then they lead u to the computer to watch ur own concert. damn boliao, but we enjoyed it. hahaha.
After which, we went looking for those jam rooms again, Neisha joined us and we sang our hearts out.. haha.. it was like a major karaoke session. quite nonsense to spend our time and money on that but it was really really fun. in fact we had so much fun we stayed til the very end when the security came to chase us out. Then we ran into a room on a lower level just to play for a few more minutes before the security came to chase us out again. haha. machiam never see instrument before.
Our concert ticket!!
Some of us wanted to watch Happy Feet in the omnimax theatre.. I did originally but changed my feeble mind after li ling said she didn't want to watch it. haha. So we rushed off to eat.. went to a mexican restaurant spotted by neisha from some tourist guide. the pple watching happy feet didn't have the time to eat so they had to tapao the food.
appetizers
Wet colorado. burrito with sirloin.. something something. hardly ate half of it, shld have shared with liling!
Pike Pub
We went down to where they brew 'the best beer in the world'.. hmm sounds familiar? Well it's something like brewerks I guess. We let the bar tender [danny] choose the Pike Tandem Double Ale, and Pike Kilt Lifter, one of which is sweeter than the other, but i have no idea lah. all tastes the same to me. The beer cups were so cute i was tempted to buy one haha.
The happy feet people joined us after their show. We bought these back: "Naughty Nellie: light, with lots of sex appeal". That's the description of the beer.. like, i can totally tell what it tastes like by reading that.. =_="
We ended the day at Econo Lodge, enjoying Naughty Nellie's and not forgetting the 3 crabs which were waiting for us. No pictures of crab eating cos of dirty hands. But it was superb, squatting in front of the toilet and sink eating crabs on newspapers, kinda like eating durians, with mark the tissue paper dispenser. dispenses every 5 minutes. heehee.
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