Poo-Poo Platter

A small chunk of my family came up to visit me this weekend. And by small chunk, I mean my mom, my stepdad Peter, my grandmother, my great aunt Suzie and uncle Kai (Grandma’s younger sister), my mom’s cousin Deanne, and my little cousin Karissa. Mom, Peter, and Grandma stayed with me, and the others stayed a hotel a few minutes from my apartment.

I don’t normally have family visit me, so I was totally cool spending a good portion of the weekend showing them around. On Saturday night, we all went up to Top Gun in Bellevue for dinner. The food was great, as usual, but the service really sucked that night. I think our waiter was new, so he wasn’t quite on top of things. Afterwards, we all came back to my place (8 people in a one-bedroom apartment is kind of tight) for dessert, which consisted of various fresh fruits from 99 Ranch and some pastries from Starbucks.

Today was a busy day for us. We had dim sum at Imperial Garden in The Great Wall Shopping Mall. I haven’t had dim su in ages, so I was loving every single bite. The shu mai and shrimp dumplings (ha-gow) were particularly fresh and tasty. After lunch, we drove into Chinatown and did a bit of shopping. Grandma, Mom, and Aunt Suzie were hunting for good deals on Chinese DVDs. Deanne, Karissa, and I went shopping in some of the small toy and gift shops. Peter and Uncle Kai just followed everyone around.

Once we had our fill of Chinatown, we drove over to Pike Place Market. It had been years since any of my family members had been there, so it was all basically new to them. They were in awe at the sheer amount and variety of fresh seafood and produce that was available. No one bought anything, but they had fun just browsing around. I had fun taking pictures of everything that I had missed the last time I was there.

We spent a couple of hours wandering around the market and decided that it was time for a break. We ended up hanging out at Local Color, a very cool cafe and art gallery, for coffee and snacks. I had never been there before, but it seemed like a great place to go, because I noticed a lot of people hanging out there with laptops and books. Those people looked like locals, so I figured that was a good sign that the cafe was good for drinks and hangout. Turns out I was right. Everyone enjoyed their beverages, and I enjoyed perusing the paintings and and sculptures that were on display.

We closed out the day with a light dinner at the Vietnamese restaurant back at The Great Wall. Everyone was pretty exhausted from a day of walking around, but all seemed to have had a good day. It was definitely fun for me, as I got to hang out with my family without having to drive to Portland and back. I also had fun taking pics of my cousin Karissa, who was a great sport about being my favored photo subject for the day.

The full set of photos from today is available in my Flickr photostream.

| family | photography | pike place market