It’s been a month?! nuts. Brian’s been begging me to write a new post, and it really is overdue. I feel like I have so much to write about but so little to say!
It simultaneously feels like we’ve been here for 2 days, and also 2 years. So so so much has happened in this month, and I feel like Brian and I are still playing catch up every day, trying to keep up with everything.
Our apartment is starting to feel more homey, especially after our first fire in the fireplace this past weekend! My mom came to visit during our first week here, and helped us clean the apartment from top to bottom, and paint every single surface. It’s amazing what a coat of paint will do….
Everything is unpacked and almost completely put away, and we’re finally able to relax instead of always cleaning and organizing. We’re extremely thankful for the location we chose to live in, being surrounded by the best transit in the city and having access to everything. We can walk to work in 30 minutes, ride to work in 8 minutes, or take a bus or train. We’ve found our favorite coffee shops and corner stores, and fell in love with Volunteer Park which is only a few blocks from our apartment.
We took our first ferry a few weeks ago…. AND LOVED IT. I cannot believe we live so close to the water, and we have access to so many beautiful places. We loved Bainbridge Island so much, that we’re getting married there!!! (more on that later)
Our first impressions of Seattle were pretty spot on. The rain can be overwhelming, the dogs are EVERYWHERE, the hills are still huge but getting easier to handle, and the food is just as good as we originally thought. It rained for about 10 days straight last week, which got to be almost humorous to us, but then we had a few sunny days in a row which made up for it. We have both been hearing nonstop from literally every single person we talk to that Seattle’s summers are just the most incredibly beautiful summers ever, and make the rainy season worth it. We’re hoping that’s true, especially this year since we’re having our ceremony outside in the middle of July!
Some things we LOVE about Seattle:
Paper Hammer, Stitches, Drygoods, Glasswing
Mountains – we have a really cool view of the mountains when we walk to work, but sometimes it’s too overcast or cloudy to see them. On the days when it’s bright and clear, we joke that ‘the mountains are out today!’
Biking – the hills suck. We can coast downhill to work in the mornings in about 8 minutes, but riding back uphill on the way home is another story. We got totally rocked and had to walk partway the first time, but then made it up on our second try. We’re still figuring things out. We dragged home a bike from the trash for me last week which is going to need some serious aesthetic work, but it has gears and that’s what matters.
FISH – OMG THE FISH HERE IS SO GOOD. Brian has found his happy place in the PNW, and it thankfully involves homemade seafood chowder and fires in our fireplace.
Volunteer Park – I can barely find the words to describe how wonderful and magical and beautiful this park is, so here’s two sentences and a few photos from our first time visiting.
Brian – “I think I need to start carrying a brass pocket telescope.”
Veronica – “This place is SO Hogwarts”
There is mold, and moss, and succulents, and mushrooms everywhere. I guess this is what comes with living in a perennially wet place, and we’re still getting used to it. We’re a little freaked out about the mold in our apartment (probably not a big deal), but we’re also starting to realize that it’s pretty common. I’ve gone through almost 16 oz of bleach just in the bathroom. Turns out our grout isn’t supposed to be black! Also apparently asbestos is harmless if you don’t bother it. We don’t plan on bothering it.
The temperature in February is similar to Chicago in April. It’s around 50 degrees, way chillier in the morning than the afternoon, and a little damp. I’ve always thought those pack able lightweight down jackets are stupid because where on earth would you ever need just a little bit of down warmth. Seattle, that’s where. Guaranteed whoever invented that lives somewhere in the Pacific Northwest. We’re starting to realize that we buy clothes for the extremes. Sleeveless shirts and short shorts for summer, and uggs and duvet-weight jackets for the winter. Seattle is a city of in-between weather, where layers are actually useful on a daily basis. Sounds like a reason to go shopping if you ask me 🙂
It seems like everyone here is appreciative of their surroundings and the majority of people are fairly observant. We commented on how few people walk around with their phones out, which is a happy surprise for me since I was terrified that Seattle would be super techy. Our upstairs neighbor feels differently, but we’re learning to take his opinions with a grain of salt. This lack of phone use might also explain why Yelp isn’t very popular here, and Google searches give you very few results for nearby grocery stores. Or breweries. You’re much better off just walking around to find what you need instead of mapping it. It’s odd.
We’ve done a typical amount of walking (tons) around the city this week, which has led to some pretty cool experiences and funny ones too. We’ve both fallen up and down at least 10 hills, and had close calls on all of the uneven sidewalks. I barely avoided getting hit with bird poop, about 5 seconds before a pigeon fell out of the sky a inch in front of Brian’s face, slammed into the sidewalk, and twitched itself to death in front of our eyes. That was interesting, and apparently not the first time Brian’s narrowly avoided death by falling pigeon. We successfully took the bus/streetcar a few times, and discovered a wonderful way to get around the city without hitting all the hills. Our Airbnb was way further from downtown than we thought, making us much more thankful for our new apartment location that’s only a 30 min walk (downhill) to get downtown. It’s not that much of a stretch to say that all we need is a little push out the driveway and we could coast all the way downhill to work! (In a bike lane the whole way too)
We were able to snag this apartment within 2 hours of landing in Seattle for the first time, thanks to Brian’s insistence and great gut feeling. I wasn’t as convinced at first, but I am so so glad we went with it. It’s definitely a fixer upper (secretly excited about that) and needed some very serious deep cleaning before it was even live able, but it’s perfect for us. The kitchen is the size of our old bathroom, maybe smaller, but we have a bedroom! With a door! And enough room that we’ll both be able to get out of bed on our own sides! It’s the little things.
Our flight to Seattle was slightly less rough, but probably more traumatic for Brian whose seat mate recounted his close calls with plane crashes during the entire takeoff.
Ever since Brian got the first job offer in Chicago, we’ve been on a roller coaster of emotions, going from being super anxious to relieved and then back again. There are just so many unknowns right now. Even when he finally signed the offer in Seattle, I was relieved that we’d made an actual decision, but terrified of the huge changes that were coming our way. We’re in the process of packing up our lives and our apartment, finding a new home on the other side of the country, and somehow trying do all of this in three short weeks. The worst part is that almost none of it can be done ahead of time. Since I’ll be staying in Chicago for a few weeks while Brian is in Seattle, we can’t pack up the whole apartment yet, and can’t ship it until we have an apartment to ship it to. LOGISTICS SUCK.
veronimama 