Maddison's Musings

Last month, I went to Washington state to visit family, and one of the days we went and explored Seattle. I freaking love cities, especially Seattle. If you ever get the chance, I highly recommend you go and explore downtown Seattle at least once in your life. Although busy, the Pike Place Market is so much fun and there's so many cool shops inside.

We started off our Seattle adventure with some coffee, since Seattle is known as the coffee capital of the world since it's the birthplace of Starbucks. But I didn't want to go to Starbucks. No, if I was going to have coffee (which I desperately needed considering how early we woke up), I was going to have a coffee with some cute ass latte art. Seattle has tons of coffee places, but Moore Coffee is well known for their latte art and conveniently only a block or two from the market.

The coffee shop is right next to the Moore Theatre (where I actually met Tyler Oakley on his Slumber Party Tour last year), and it's a small shop, but definitely worth it. The inside was decorated so cutely, there were pictures everywhere, a virtual fire place going, and the place where you add sugar and stuff to your coffee was on a painted dresser. The whole shop had a simple homey quality to it. Although fairly busy, the wait wasn't too long, and we found a table to sit and enjoy our drinks. I also really liked the big cups the coffee came in, there's just something so nice about sipping coffee out of a large, round mug. Each latte comes with a random design and a little bite of chocolate. For our designs, my brother got an octopus and I got a cat. In all honesty, I'm not a fan of the foam on lattes, I just like the design, so after my first few sips I scraped as much foam as I could onto my place, but the coffee underneath the foam was delicious.

Once we finished our drinks, we walked the two blocks down to the market to do some more exploring. I don't know what it is about cities, but they make me really happy and I just feel really safe and content in cities, especially large ones. It's so weird to say that, considering most people avoid cities because they make them nervous. Also, considering I have intense anxiety and get nervous over literally nothing, that's another reason my love for cities is a bit odd. I can't explain it really, they just sort of put me at ease and I want to live in some of the biggest cities in the world- London, New York/Manhattan, Austin, etc. My mom even let me walk a few paces ahead of her and my brother, giving me a sense of freedom. She snapped this cool shot of me walking.

Soon enough, we made our way to the iconic Pike Place Market and stood with all the other tourists to take a picture of the sign. Don't even get me started on Pike Place, I have so much love in my heart for that market everything is so cute. First of all, there are cool people everywhere. I saw so many magnificent street performers, including a man who could hula hoop, play the guitar, and sing at the same time, a teenager playing classical music on the violin, and older man playing the Harry Potter theme song on a saxophone, and a man who brought an entire fucking piano down on the street to play music. I'm not talking about a little keyboard, no. This man brought an entire 88-key stand-up piano, just like you would see in a middle school choir room, onto the streets to jam out. It was beautiful. Apart from the fact that people sell fresh produce in the market, such as fish, flowers, fruit, honey, etc, there are also tons of shops inside the market and on a lower level. I'm a sucker for cute little trinkets, so by the end of the day, I had a bag full of little goodies I bought. I got a small, heart shaped pink crystal of some type, two bookmarks, one of those souvenir pressed pennies, a free newspaper, a tiny handmade glass pumpkin, a single sunflower, a mint jacket that says Seattle, my name written in Chinese calligraphy, and a bunch of free hi-chew. Plus, most of the things I bought were fairly cheep, so I didn't break the bank, another reason to love this beautiful market. We also visited the disgustingly iconic Gum Wall. It's literally a dark alley where the walls are lined with gum. It's disgusting, but also beautiful in a weird way.

Once we finished up with Pike Place and the downtown area, we drove up to Queen Anne Hill and got some lunch at a pizza place and went to Kerry Park, where we got the most amazing city view. I love love love love city skylines, and if you do as well, then go to Kerry Park. You will not be disappointed. It's not so much a park as it is a strip of grass to overlook the city, but there was a park down below if you wanted to go. It's especially beautiful on a clear day, because you can see everything. You have a view of both Puget Sound, and downtown Seattle, and it's a breathtakingly beautiful sight.

Before heading home, we stopped at Top Pot Doughnuts and gained a few cavities. The inside was really nicely decorated, and it had a huge bookshelf filled with books. It was really cute and a nice way to end our Seattle Exploration.