How we celebrate 10

Our anniversary was actually a couple of weeks ago, but I knew I wanted to put some time into these particular posts, so I've been waiting till I can give it adequate attention.

A typical anniversary for us usually means going out to dinner.  But since this was our 10th and all, we decided to step it up a notch.  We planned a wonderful day over in Seattle.  It was so enjoyable.  So nice.  So happy. 

There is a "Chocolate Tour" you can take over in Seattle.  But it's $50 a person!  Our entire date budget would be gone done and spent in less than 2 hours.  So being the educated highly competent individuals that we are, we put together our own Chocolate Tour.  And frankly, I think it was even nicer.  We got to go at our own pace, brows, dilly dadle, mosey, take a detour through pike's place fruit stands, or just move on when a place was not that impressive.  Talked all we wanted and totally enjoyed each others one-on-one company.  We didn't have to politely devote our attention to a tour guide.  My love was able to pick out things to sample that were light on dairy.  AND even though we weren't with a "tour," almost every place we stopped gave us a free sample of something to taste!  It was just all totally great. 

Our first stop was Fran's Chocolates.  Fancy schmancy!  It's at the ground level of the Four Seasons Hotel and Private Residences and lets just say it fits in accordingly.  The ritziest place we went to all day.  Chocolate was $2 a piece.  A comparable price to most other chocolates on our tour, but NOT a comparable size.  They were 1/2 the size of a normal piece of chocolate, not exaggerating.  (I know my chocolate.) 

The best part of this stop was when they offered us a free sample of their salted caramels.  (Apparently they are so wonderful they are served in the White House.)  I was thrilled cause I've always wondered what all the hype was about.    But my love had no desire to eat salt on his chocolate, and politely said no thank you.  The guy behind the counter looked at him like he was crazy and said, "It's worth $2!"   :)  My love explained his salt aversion and the totally awesome clerk offered him a taste of one without salt.

Rocky Mountain Chocolate Factory wasn't originally on our list, but we walked right by it and decided to add it.
 

 

Unfortunately, The Confectional, was a bit of a disappointment to me.  Partially because it was the chocolate stop I was anticipating the most.  They had Colombian Drinking Chocolate.  I assumed it would be a step closer to bliss than normal hot chocolate.  But alas, no.  It had cinnamon in it.  Totally ruined it for me.  Bleh.  You can't write them off completely though, cause their cheesecake truffle was supper yummy. 

The Chocolate Box had a GREAT hot chocolate free sample that made up for my colombian riff raff disappointment.  Summer time or not, it was really good.  We also had a chocolate that looked like a strawberry that I forgot to take a picture of.  But I do NOT recommend their chocolate honey sticks.  :s  I love honey, and heaven knows I love chocolate.  But putting them together made me gag. 

It's a good thing we only had one more chocolate stop after this cause I'll admit we were reaching our chocolate capacity. (So hard to believe I know.)

Cupcake Royale is right next door to the Chocolate Box.  And it is here where we ran into the actual "chocolate tour" that we stole the idea from.  :s  Which would have been absolutely no big deal except the tour guide noticed we were holding the map that I printed off their website and asked if I was there for a tour.  :s  He was really good about it though and didn't appear to care, and recomended a chocolate to try.

After getting our fill of chocolate we went to catch a matinee of The Lone Ranger.  In anticipation for this movie we watched the first couple of episodes of the original Lone Ranger TV series.  Which was great.  We already had an understanding of the characters and knew some key events that were going to take place.  I was really excited to see this movie.  I really want to love this movie.  But I just can't.  I don't know that I'll ever be able to bring myself to watch it again.  They made the bad guy a cannibal.  I knew he was going to be killing people, but . . . . ya. 






The plan was to go to an early dinner after the movie, but we had A LOT of chocolate that morning and we certainly weren't starving yet.  So we decided to just take in some of the sights of the city. 

Going to the top of the space needle crossed our minds but it's on the expensive side and included a nice long wait.  So we opted to save that experience for some other time. 

There was a very small "garden" with large polished rocks.  The rocks had poetic thoughts engraved in them.  This one was my favorite.


Oh, if you're a bird.  be an early bird
and catch the worm for your breakfast plate
If you're a bird, be an early early bird-
But if you're a worm, sleep late.     -Shel Silverstein

We finished off our wonderful day with a wonderful dinner.  We had gone back and forth about where we would eat.  In the end we were both SO GLAD we decided on here.  It was super yummy and we had a great waiter.  AND, if you know us well, you know we get a big kick out of getting a good deal.  (Hense our unhealthy obsession with thrift stores and  yard sales.)  I had a $10 gift card from 2 years ago that I thought I would never use, AND we "liked" their page on facebook and got a $10 off coupon, AND because it was our 10th anniversary, the waiter talked to the manager who came and congratulated us and told us our dessert was free.  Ya, we were tickled. 

(WARNING: Here comes the mushy conclusion. )
It was such a nice day.  So wonderful.  But part of what made it so great was the fact that we enjoyed just being in each others company so much.  It can be hard to remember how much you just like being together, when you've got a diaper bag and other slightly distracting parenting accessories in hand.  Thank you to my friends who made it possible for me and my love to spend this time together.