to market, to market

After glassblowing and looking at glass art and having a bite in downtown Tacoma, Julia and I headed to Federal Way to meet up with Julia's sister, Laurel, and Laurel's boyfriend, Roland. Roland's house is up on a hill with awesome, unobstructed views of Puget Sound. If I lived there, I would probably just sit on the couch and look out the windows all the time. I didn't really get a chance to really take in the views, though, but I did get to take a couple of shots.

We followed them to Seattle, where they had made late lunch reservations for us at Wild Ginger. (I'm actually eating there later this week with APALA folks, but I didn't think it was worth it to change lunch plans at the last minute. Anyway, I figured it was a good way to try more of the menu.)

For appetizers, I had the short rib, while the other three had different kinds of satays. Below is my dish and Roland's boar satay. I enjoyed my dish, as well as the tastes I had of the satays.

For our main entrees, we had a full order of fragrant duck and a small order of seven flavor beef. Roland had seafood soup. The duck was alright--I've had better, though I do enjoy the dough. I only had a bite of the beef, but it was good. I didn't taste the soup, but Roland seemed to enjoy it.

Since this was already my third meal of the day (I had cinnamon cake before glassblowing and a weird combo of clam chowder and waffles after the museum), I was too full to get dessert. (And, I was thinking that there might be other food choices later on that afternoon.) The other three had coconut gelato. (If I really want, I could always try this when I come back.)

We then headed to Pike Place Market. As it was mid-afternoon on a Saturday, it was crowded. I've been there before, but there are always new things to see. Plus, I figured I'll take a couple of pictures.

We passed by the first Starbucks store and saw this street performer doing hula hoops and balancing his guitar.

After pretty much going around the shops both in the market and across the street, I finally suggested that we go to Le Pichet. As I've mentioned elsewhere, I've been looking for thick hot chocolate like I had at Naked Chocolate Cafe in Philly. I happened to remember to do a search while I was planning my itinerary for this trip, and I read about Le Pichet's and Cafe Presse's chocolat chaud. It seemed to fit what I was looking for so I put it on my potential to-do list.

When I found out we were going to Pike's Place, I knew we had to stop by at Le Pichet. So we did. Here's my chocolat chaud--a decadent cup of ultra-thick dark chocolate. I have to admit it was just a tad bit bitter for me, so I actually had to use some of that whipped cream. I was glad I skipped dessert at lunch so I could have this gooey goodness.

On this note, we called it a day and headed home. We got home relatively early but we were so stuffed that we didn't have dinner anymore. It was a good day.