The Bite of Seattle

            Floods of people swarmed the city and slowly took their time to shuffle steps forward while keeping their eyes on something to their right or left. You could nearly refer them to an army of zombies, yet they didn’t have the look of death in their eyes, but of life. I was definitely one of the zombies making my way through Seattle, but I had a camera pinned to my eye the entire time.

Through the years my family has always made it a known fact to make extravagant trips. And when I say extravagant, I mean roughing it. We have never been sit-down people, we are constantly moving, constantly living, all on a budget.

After years of collecting pins from every state in the East and Midwest, we finally embarked on a much-anticipated journey. Months of planning and months of waiting finally all came together as we traveled into the west.

Nearly one of the first days we arrived, we made our way to Seattle. The thing about our family is that someway and somehow we always manage to be at the right place at the right time. As we were in Seattle, we were lucky enough to get caught in a great summer festival called the Bite of Seattle.

Thousands of people gathered under the steaming sun, laughing, eating and listening to at least fifteen different music groups playing all at once, all on different stages. I remember listening to the artists, who were mainly groups from the eighties, and I was astounded and fascinated. All the music mixed together to make one beautiful harmony.

We trekked through the great city, surrounded by smells of greasy American food, Grecian food, Italian and even Thai. 

The Rambutan fruit from Thailand is a fruit with a prickly looking outer shell and fleshy inside,
but it is sweet and refreshing.

We came to the Chihuly Gardens and were serenaded by singing solar glass flowers that towered high over us.

Seattle's well known Space Needle and Chihuly's glass singing flowers, tower over us.

We sat in line for our coffee from the first Starbucks for at least half an hour. The line poured out of the shop and pooled onto the people infested streets. A folk group sang at the entrance with a black dog laying at their feet and odd dolls sitting in a tips case. They sang songs that delighted my family as we danced, clapped and sang along to. My cousins and I continued to sing the lyrics of one of their songs, “Dang girl why we gotta be related? Dang girl why ya gotta look so good?”

The line for the first Starbucks is enough to make anyone speechless,
but not enough to make anyone get out of line.

A folk group attracts an even larger crowd to the already crowded Starbucks.

A lazy lab "protects" a suitcase that's filled with tips. 

The crammed coffee shop looked straight over at the Public Market, where fruits and flowers were being sold and fish were being thrown. We squished through the market with hot coffee in hand and bright, humorous smiles cemented to our sweaty faces. Fish with eyes still in their head stared up at me, begging for an escape. Lobsters pinched at each other as they still lived in aquariums, obviously not for long. Shrimp were the size of a full-grown man’s fist.

A worker steals a piece of his fruit and munches away at it.

At the middle of the market was the Pike Place Fish Market. Men were shouting like a baseball umpire would, except they would be yelling something about a fish. Then they’d cradle a slimy fish for a second, and toss the poor beast to one another. Ice scrambled onto the floor and a weird fish I’ve never seen or heard of before lay with its mouth hanging open. Children squirmed up to it, poked it with one finger and squealed, as they would run behind their mother for protection.  

A boy looks inside the rubbery fish's mouth. 

There are those cities, like New York or Paris that are stories in themselves. They ooze out stories of love and charm and yank people into their gigantic arms. Seattle is one great big story that will never stop writing itself or stop playing its magical music.