I’m back now. The last day was relaxing, mainly because we didn’t have to pack up and check out before 11am, as we did for most of the rest of the trip. I felt pretty lazy all day. We walked from the hotel down to the the famous Pike Market, where normally there are guys throwing fish around and stuff. But since no one was buying fish that day, there was just a crowd of tourists standing around the fish vendors, who were tossing a lemon around to keep themselves amused.

We had lunch at the Athenian, which is inside the market, overlooking the water. Tom Hanks and Rob Reiner filmed a scene from Sleepless in Seattle here. The antique eatery provided a nice environment. The food was somewhat expensive and mediocre though. Oh well. You can’t have everything I guess.

After lunch, we headed up to the Seattle Art Museum. They had quite an ecclectic collection of paintings, sculpture, costumes, and photos. Going from one room of contemporary aboriginal art to a room of Renaissance paintings was a bit jarring, but still fascinating.

That night, we met my sister Jadine and her boyfriend/semi-fiance Dave for dinner at Ray’s Cafe.
I neglected to mention that I noticed Jadine’s new, stylish and modern hair cut. Well, I did notice it, and it looks great. So if Jadine’s reading this, consider it noticed!

The next morning we had to get up at 5:30am to return the Cookie Monster, and to get to the airport for our flight home. We should have gotten up at 5:00am because our flight was actually leaving 30 minutes earlier than I had noted in my organizer. Whoops. Anyway, it all worked out ok. The flight back was uneventful and pleasant-ish. Even the small Embrauer jet we were on had personal TVs in the seatbacks, which I think is the single most important aviation invention ever. It keeps you from wanting to claw your face off from boredom during long flights.

When we got back to Laura’s place, I discovered that Emeril had decided to die during my absence. It’s nice to be missed, although, not so nice to have to call CAA to resolve the situation. Turns out that my battery is already dead and needs to be replaced. I’m appalled that my 2 year-old car already needs a new battery, but what can you do? The CAA guy says it’s not uncommon these days. Things just aren’t made like they used to be!

I finally got home, and proceeded to dump my stuff everywhere like I normally do when I get home from a trip. Except, since I’ve moved all my rooms around, nothing is where I expected it to be, so dumping my stuff was a bit confusing. Basically, things are everywhere now. I’ll figure it out later! 😛