Day 4: THURSDAY

No more food... please, no more food... I'm about to explode...

We got to sleep in a little bit this morning – Laura and I stayed up kind of late, so we didn't get up until 9:00 – and had a light continental breakfast before setting out on our tourist trek. The weather was much prettier today – around 70 degrees and sunny, with a cool breeze blowing in off the ocean. (No rain at all! According to the guidebook, June is the third driest month in this city.) We trooped around Seattle on foot, first walking up the waterfront/pier area from our hotel, then climbing to the Pike Place Market, a stack of hundreds of shops and booths that sell hand-crafted merchandise and tons of fresh fish, flowers and various other types of produce. We watched men fling whole fresh fish at each other (a trademark of the Market; they also go on national tours doing business seminars). For lunch, we feasted on fresh grilled Alaskan halibut, garlic bread, clam chowder and organic greens in the Market. Yum! Then we went to some more shops, chatted with an author doing a book signing (Laura eventually bought one of his books), ate blueberry and Oreo shakes that we really didn't need, and finally wound up in a retro travel shop that sold everything from vintage Canard/White Star luggage stickers to actual vases and tableware from the Queen Mary.

Um... so, yeah, we went a little overboard at that store. But we got some cool stuff! Mom bought tons of travel tags and stickers, to use in decorating; Laura bought canvas prints of 1930s and '40s pulp fiction covers, to hang in the lobby outside her media room; I bought prints of Valentino and Lombard to hang in my movie-star-themed bathroom. Considering everything they had in that shop, I think we exercised considerable restraint. :)

For dinner, we had made reservations at Ivar's Acres of Clams. (Not that any of us were hungry; I feel like I've done nothing but eat ever since I started this trip. This is no doubt exacerbated by the fact that I spend hours on my feet every day at work, so the several miles of walking all over Seattle isn't really burning any more calories than I'm used to on a daily basis. Unfortunately, I've been taking in three or four times the daily amout of food I normally eat.) Ivar's is kind of a landmark, too, and with good reason. Dad had almond-encrusted Alaskan halibut; Jon had fish and chips; Laura and Mom and I had fillet of King salmon with pomegranite and sun-dried tomato sauce over roasted red potatoes, sprinkled with goat cheese, along with smoked salmon chowder and the sourdough rolls that were served with the meal. Even though Laura and I split an entree between us, we still couldn't finish all of it.

If this keeps up, I'm going to gain fifteen pounds by the end of next week. Laura and I are already planning the exercise routines we're going to have to do on the ship just to be able to sit down to dinner each night. This is our fifth cruise on Celebrity, and they've never served fewer than fifteen meals or nibbles (afternoon tea, etc.) per day. And after all, it's so hard to turn down those lovely swan puffs and chocolate-dipped strawberries and things...

But, as we discovered this morning, that's why we have Record of Journey to the West – a Hong Kong techno CD so repetitive, it's good for very little other than aerobic exercise. Fortunately, I ripped the whole thing to Minekura the day before we left. :)

Oh, and on an unrelated side note, if anyone's considering buying the first Vampire Hunter D novel... Don't. It's bad. I mean, it's really bad. As in, laugh-out-loud-because-it's-so-incomprehensibly-silly bad. If you'd like to borrow my copy, you're more than welcome, but don't waste money on it. Laura and I stayed up two hours later than we'd intended last night, simply because I was reading passages to her out loud, and we both were laughing so hard we had tears running down our faces.

It's really sad, actually, because it's an excellent premise. I've seen both of the movies (Bloodlust several times, in fact), and I do enjoy the story. It's just that the novel is so badly executed! I have no idea how it spawned so many sequels and became such a huge international hit. Now, I know that the translation is partly at fault – after all, how many villains would throw a razor-edged flying weapon called a “shrike-blade?” (Apparently they thought Americans wouldn't understand what a shuriken is. They underestimate the ninja-worshipping Naruto fans.) But, as much as I'd like to blame the Americanization for all the book's problems, I really can't. The writing is just... weak.

You needn't worry; I won't give you a rundown of the novel's many fallacies here, since this is supposed to be a record of my vacation and not a book review. But if you ever want a good laugh, ask me about talking hands and Sluggy Freelance sometime. :)