Day 5 (Portland to Seattle)

Greetings from Seattle! We've just arrived home from dinner with Mindi, Lina and Lina's friend, Kat. We had a fabulous dinner at Tilikum Place Café with everything from glorious Jigsaw Willamette Valley Pinot Noir to grilled asparagus with parmesan and topped it off with profiteroles (Maura actually like them!). She's an Italian at heart. To which she responded "Haha NO". She's quite loyal to her shamrock don't try to classify her as anything else. She gets cranky.

Lots of driving in the rain today. Olympia and Tacoma in particular were MONSOON towns.

Before we departed the beloved Portland, we hit up the Saturday Market, Bijou Cafe and Powell's Books.

Powell's is NOT TO BE MISSED. It has every book you could ever think of in your life. And, shocker, the people who work there actually know about the books! They have read them! We spent at least 90 minutes browsing and buying before we had to tear ourselves away and get in Champ to hit the road. Actually, in the fairness of full disclosure...Maura mentioned yesterday in the gardens that she actually "missed the open road". Well, she got her wish and Champ was off to another running start.

More tomorrow...we are loosing steam and chatting with Mindi.