Neil and I were down in Seattle last weekend to celebrate my birthday. We packed a lot of walking into two days. Friday night, I picked Neil up from Seattle as he hitched a ride from some buddies who were in Seattle to watch a DJ. We drove around Seattle a little before making our way back to Bellevue. On our way home, we stopped at an old drive-in burger joint, BurgerMaster. I had never been to a drive-in, so we couldn’t pass up the opportunity to eat at the old 50s icon. I had already eaten, so I just ordered a shake, but Neil ordered their Burgermaster. It was, by far, the best burger we’ve ever tasted. We meant to go back before we left, but we never made it. For the rest of the night, I drove Neil around Bellevue, showing him the park, its art and a few other spots around town, before we went back to the hotel and crashed after a long week.

Saturday started with a drive to the downtown core. We walked around the historical Pioneer Square with its old buildings and streets. There were flocks of tourists snapping photos as they listened to their guide. We decided to join the mass of tourists the following day for a tour of the underground city. Until then, we just guided ourselves through the busy streets, down to Pier 50. There was activity in the water as a playful seal kept breaking the surface of the water only to dive back down and break the surface several feet from its previous location. We watched him for several minutes before making our way back up the street and to our vehicle in search of another parking spot, closer to Pike Place Market.

We walked a block towards the market before coming across a vibrant back-alley. The back alleys of Seattle are nothing like Vancouver’s. There is no graffiti and there are shops lining the alleys with life in stark contrast to the rat-infested, rubbish-piled, drug-addict-combing back-alleys I’m used to. As we walked the back alleys, we came upon The Tasting Room - Wines of Washington serving wines of six state wineries. We enjoyed several wines and good conversation with the locals before deciding on two reds - a Syrah from the young Naches Heights Vineyard and Grace from the more established Camaraderie Cellars. With our bottles in tote, we continued along the back alley to the front of the next block to find “The Starbucks”, the birthplace of the coffee house on 1st Avenue, Seattle. We ordered a couple of lattes, along with a few mugs and found our way back onto the city streets.

Disappointedly, we arrived at the market just as it was closing. Many of the vendors were shutting down their stations and packing up, so we decided that we would have to return the next day. We searched for a specific dinner location called The Crab Pot and found it on the water at Pier 57. However, with a 45-minute wait, we decided to head back to Bellevue to eat at its Crab Pot instead. We ordered the “The Westport” with its Dungeness crab (my favourite, snow crab, shrimp in the shell, steamed clams and pacific mussles, along witn andouille sausage, corn on the cob and finally red potatoes in their jackets. Having missed lunch, we were famished and barely spoke a word once we dug in, only breaking between shell cracks. It was delicious!

Saturday evening, I was in search of a jazz lounge to listen to some great piano, bass, trumpet and saxophone. We searched all over Seattle, but having left our planning to the last minute, we had missed out on a few great shows. We found an intimate little jam house just north of downtown called Egan’s Ballard Jam House.

Club owner Suzanne Weghorst, a virtual reality researcher at the University of Washington, was motivated to open Egan’s by the lack of appropriate places for young jazz musicians to play and to learn from more experienced artists.

The club had a good mix of young and old musicians jamming together on stage. The trumpeter was the old guy running the show and did so with a lot of passion and fervor. I could have sat there for hours. A few musicians had come and gone throughout the night; at one point there was a pianist, bassist, drummer, alto, two tenors and bass saxophonists, and even a djembe drummer. Their ability to come together as one solid jam unit was phenomenal and kept the crowd fully entertained, tapping their toes to their rhythm. Whenever I attend these sorts of musical sessions, I’m motivated to tickle the ivory or pluck nylon strings, but then never do it. I really miss that in my life and should really invest in a used instrument again. I’m torn between a new lens and a used digital piano; the piano will likely lose out.