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.

The view from the street corner of our apartment entrance. Not bad.

Two weeks of traveling and then we'll be back in Boston! I'll update soon with pictures and stories from our drive.

The First Few Days

Well, we've been in Boston now since Saturday. A lot has happened but here are some of the highlights.

The whole drive up went super smooth. However, upon arriving in Cambridge, the car got separated from the truck because there are bridges over the road to our apartment that the truck could not fit under. So immediately the truck had to turn off and we saw it going over the bridge into Boston. Then the rest of us in the car proceeded to miss our turn and ended up going over a DIFFERENT bridge, also into Boston. EPIC. FAIL. (as my dad said). So after we all got back over to Cambridge and found the apartment, we parked and unloaded everything. This is our building!

This is the view from our bedroom and from the desk.

Hello, Charles River!

Sunday, our first full day in Boston, was eventful. The weather was perfect and we started the day with donuts and coffee from the Dunkin Donuts located conveniently right across the street from Eastgate! We then walked MIT and showed our parents the campus. The dome was looking particularly lovely!

After some lunch, we took the whole family on the T and rode it into Boston to go on the Freedom Trail. This was mine and Chuckie's 2nd time on the Freedom Trail. We had a different tour guide so we learned all sorts of different stuff than we did the first time. I have a feeling we're going to end up VERY educated on Paul Revere and Sam Adams by the end of these two years.



Oh and speaking of Sam Adams...

After the Freedom Trail and a sitting/drink break, we made our way back to the T to go back to Cambridge where we ate at Legal Sea Food. Yum. But on the way....

Not only will we know a lot about Boston's history by the time Chuckie graduates, we'll also probably own several shirts like these that we saw for sale on the street.

Monday. Dunkin Donuts (yes, again) and then we had to say goodbye to my parents. :( After they left, we hung some pictures in the apartment and finished organizing the kichen, found the mall (that's about a 13 minute walk from our apartment! Woot!) and went to eat at John Harvard's. We then drove 30 minutes outside of Boston to find a Walmart. Pretty sure a lot of the pictures submitted to The People of Walmart may have been taken at this Walmart. Just sayin'.

Oh and look what else we found.

GE! Chuckie was really excited.

Ok, two last things because I know this is getting long. Here is our living room with the new rug we bought at Walmart.

Also, every hour we're here I'm more and more happy we didn't bring cars with us. Check out these signs right outside our apartment.

You basically have to sit in front of this pole for 5 minutes if you're trying to park here and figure out what day of the week it is, what time it is and a whole bunch of other stuff.  In case you can't read the one on the left, it says: Tow Zone, No Parking, 8 am - 2 pm, First Monday, Each Month, April 1st to December 31st, Except Holidays. WHAT!?!?! Also if there are cumulonimbus clouds, it's above 71 degrees, and you're wearing a green shirt. I mean they might as well add that because it wouldn't be much more ridiculous than what it already says.