Somewhere Only We Know: Goodbye, Seattle

It's hard to believe it, but our 6 months in Seattle are already over. We leave TOMORROW.

We definitely have mixed emotions about leaving. On the one hand, we're ready to be back in Boston with our apartment, furniture/stuff, and friends. On the other hand, the weather in Seattle has been perfect lately and we've recently discovered a couple places in town that we wish we would have found sooner/had more time to explore.

To sum up our time here, I've come up with a list of my 10 favorite and 10 least favorite things about Seattle.

Least Favorites:
1. Lack of air conditioning in most places, especially in our apartment.
2. Aggressive/mean homeless people.
3. The fact that people sometimes walk around naked in the streets and it's ok. Nothing will shock you more than walking to dinner and rounding the corner only to almost run smack into a topless woman.
4. Ants in our bathroom. Ants in our kitchen. Ants on my arm while I'm sitting on our couch.
5. Lack of parking. Of all the hours we've spent in Seattle, about 50% of them were spent searching for a parking spot. Ok, maybe I'm exaggerating a little, but... only a little.
6. Construction. It seems like all of Seattle is currently under construction. Which leads me to...
7. Traffic. It doesn't matter what time of day it is, there is ALWAYS traffic. 1 pm... 10 pm... 7 am... I've never seen anything like it.
8. Pacific Time Zone. I feel like everything revolves around the Eastern Time Zone and being out here makes us feel like we're always behind. And I hate adding 3 hours to the time when I look at the clock to see if it's an acceptable time to text or call someone on the East Coast. It also makes watching a TV show difficult if people on the East Coast watch it first and post about it on Twitter. (#firstworldproblems, I know)
9. Four way stops where no one has a stop sign. There are so many parts of Seattle where there will be an intersection where a logical 4 way or at least 2 way stop should be, and there's just no stop signs. It's like taking your life into your own hands every time you drive.
10. There's no ChickFilA here and the closest Dairy Queen is a 20 minute drive.

Favorites:
1. Mountains and water everywhere. The scenery here never gets old.
2. Walkability. I like that we've lived in a neighborhood where we can walk to work, the grocery, Starbucks, our friends' houses, dinner, frozen yogurt.
3. Speaking of Starbucks... they're everywhere! It's great! I was in a building downtown a few days ago and counted 4 Starbucks in just one building. It would be an understatement to say I've consumed a lot of coffee in the past 6 months.
4. Summer weather. My ideal weather is basically Seattle summer weather. Highs in the 70s-80s, sunny, no humidity, and a little cool at night. I have been in heaven this summer. I think it's Seattle's best kept secret that if you can put up with 9 months of clouds and misty rain, you're rewarded with 3 months of perfection.
5. Unlimited things to do. I feel like Chuck and I have done and seen a TON in these 6 months, but I feel like we barely dented the surface of the amount of places to go and things to do around here.
6. Free time. Without homework and extracurriculars, Chuck had a lot of free time during the week and weekends to hang out with me. This allowed us to do a lot of activities during the week. And by "activities during the week" I mean "sit on the couch and watch countless hours of Justified and Friday Night Lights while drinking chocolate milk." Yep. We're awesome.
7. City Target. A 3 story Target in the middle of downtown that has a special escalator for your shopping cart.
8. Unique bars. Seattle has some really unique bars here that I haven't seen anywhere else. My favorites are the Arcade Bar and the Pie Bar. The Arcade Bar has old school games and pinball machines you can play while you have a little drink. The Pie Bar sells two things- alcohol and pie. It's amazing.
9. Shopping. There are so many good places to shop, downtown, the U-district, the outlets, the malls...
10. I know I already said this one but it really is my favorite, favorite thing about Seattle- the mountains and water. It's just SO. PRETTY. here. Just look at it.