Pike Place Market

Hope you all had a wonderful weekend!  Now, back to this Seattle recap madness...

Antoine and I woke up bright and early on the day of our anniversary, with a long list of things on the itinerary.  We exchanged cards/gifts, gushed and even cried a little.  Then we got our butts in gear, got ready and headed toward Pike Place Market.  You may remember the how much we loved the Edible Canada tour of the Vancouver's Granville Market.  It, surprisingly enough, turned out to be our favorite part of that trip!  So, when we were researching things to do in Seattle, Pike Place Market was a definite must.  So when we saw that Savor Seattle offered at tour of the market, we knew we had to try it and see how it compared.

A couple things to note about the tour, it's kind of pricey.  But, if you're a foodie who likes learning about the history of a place and getting a behind the scenes tasting tour of some of the best spots in the market then you'll realize that it's totally worth the price tag.  Plus, with the Savor Seattle tour you get a little VIP card that gives you discounts on at all of their affiliated vendors, and that includes restaurants throughout the city.  This ended up being a great little tool for us and guided us on what restaurants to check out while we were in Seattle and saved us probably $15 in the market and around the city.  Plus, our tour guide Nick gave us incredible suggestions on places to check out and there wasn't a place that we tried that disappointed us.  They know their stuff at Savor Seattle...just check the reviews on Yelp!

The tour met up in the theater that happens to be at the gum wall.  Antoine and I were early for the tour so naturally we brought some gum and contributed to the wall.  The original gum wall is actually pretty full so the gum has migrated to the other side of the alley.  That's where we put our gum, directly on a sign that said not to put your gum here...oops!

It was our anniversary, so we obviously made a heart out of our two pieces of gum! 

The tour took us around the market tasting a variety of goodies from chai tea to three different kinds of smoked salmon.   From chowder to dried and chocolate covered cherries.  It was a lot of delicious samples and suprisingly, I liked all of it.  There wasn't one sample, out of easy twenty, that I didn't like.  Savor Seattle is very conscious of food allergies and when you book your tour they ask for a list of allergies and dislikes.  And then, day of, our guide Nick made sure everyone got to try something at almost every vendor.  So the lady who didn't eat fish, got a vegan chowder and a chicken chili at Pike Place Chowder.  It was nice and very accommodating.  (And she seemed really pleased with both samples!)

I will also say that Nick was awesome about people who were taking pictures.  He'd stop and pause while he was handing out samples so the photographers in the group could get a good shot.

Our tour guide, Nick, at Beecher's Cheese.

Oh, and also...Nick was a kickass tour guide.  Have I mentioned that already?!  Like I said, he recommended places to eat inside and outside the market to try.  Sometimes even very specific dishes, like the peanut butter cookies at Dahlia Bakery.  He gave us a historical background of the market that was entertaining and informative.  And he told the corniest jokes, which I loved!  I was actually quoting things he'd said after the tour...particularly the one when he referred to himself as a cute baby triceritops (with a plate of food samples) that we had to surrounded and protect from the evil, T-rex-like onlookers who might try to get at our tasty sample with their little T-rex arms.  Love it!  He referred to it as the Costco complex...people flock to seemingly free samples and hone in.  Hence the surround-and-protect-your-tour-guide maneuver.

While it wasn't just the two of us on the tour (like Vancouver, in the off season), Nick referenced each of the 11 or so people on the tour by their first names and somehow gave us each some one-on-one attention.  Oh, and you could tell he actually loved the food we were all sampling.  It was so obvious but made all the difference.  If you take the tour and get Nick as your tour guide consider yourself lucky!

A view of the market from the other end.

 That is food porn, people.  Take it in and be sad you can't eat it.

There were a couple of things that we sampled on the tour that we absolutely loved and had to get more of...like Beecher's Cheese and smoked salmon which we took back home as gifts (as well as some for ourselves).  But when it came to deciding what to have for lunch in the market, the decision was so easy...soup from Pike Place Chowder.  Before our tour I had never tried a clam chowder I liked, but then I tasted this.  And surprisingly enough, my favorite (even over the tasty chowder) was the seafood bisque.  If someone would have said "Jessica, you are going to love the seafood bisque at Pike Place Chowder!  It is going to be like magic on your tongue and you are going to crave it once you get home!!", I would have laughed in that person's face.  But, it's true.  That stuff was like a magical unicorn baby that shot rainbows out of it's horn.  And when Antoine and I sat down for lunch, he in front of clam chowder and me in front of my bisque, I swear we didn't say anything for a couple minutes.  We were lost in a wonderland of rich, creamy broth and the freshest seafood imaginable.  If I lived in Seattle I would get this once a week, no joke.

Oh, and no Pike Place Market tour would be complete without a demonstration of the famous fish throwing!  Lucky for me, I was front and center with my camera ready.  So I decided to make my first ever GIF, since the photos were really just begging for it...

I'm pretty happy with how the GIF turned out.  Even happier that I didn't actually get hit in the face by a fish!  But all in all, the market tour was a blast and I'd highly recommend it to anyone, especially if they've never been to the market before.  The food, guides and history lesson are all top notch.

Have you been to Pike Place Market?  What was your favorite part?

Check out what we did after our tour and lunch at Pike Place Market here and here.


*Savor Seattle did not ask me to write this post, nor did they compensate me.  It was just a fantastic tour that I wanted to share with you all.

Vancouver: Other Highlights

So, you've made it, my last official recap of our trip to Vancouver!  In a nutshell, it's an awesome city surrounded by nature with such exciting cultural diversity (read: awesome food!) that I'd visit again in a heart beat!

Oddly enough, for my last post on Vancouver I'm going to take you back to the first two days of our trip. For the last three nights of our trip we stayed in the heart of downtown, but for our first two nights we stayed in the northern bit of downtown near the harbor.  While staying in the heart of downtown offers tons of food options, staying a little north near the harbor off you easy access to Stanley Park and the Seawall. Stanley Park is pretty much this gigantic island park full of hiking trails, little lakes, and a variety of sights to see.

The view of Stanley Park from our hotel room.

On our first full day in Vancouver, we put on our raincoats and set out to explore Stanley Park.  First on our list was a trip to the Aquarium.  I have this theory that there are zoo people and there are aquarium people, and you're either one or the other.  Antoine and I are definitely aquarium person.  I personally prefer going to aquariums over zoos.  I find them more interesting and they tend to make me feel less guilty (caged animals and whatnot).  Anyway, the Vancouver Aquarium certainly did not disappoint!  It had a great selection and setup, including an excellent array of local/Pacific Northwest fish.  And some great jellyfish, which are my favorite!

After our visit to the aquarium, we walked along the Seawall and through a bit of the park, stopping at Brockton Point to see the totem poles.

On Thanksgiving day, when we were driving up to Lynn Canyon, we decided to stop in Stanley Park (again) on the way and check out Beaver Lake.  It's a little lake surrounded by trees and filled with lily pads with a great stone trail wrapping around it.  It was beautiful and quiet, great for a morning walk.  And the wildlife seemed to be very friendly...maybe a little too curious for my liking (a squirrel attempted to follow us...I don't like squirrels. They are evil!).

Now, I've saved the best for last!  Get in close and listen to my absolute favorite thing we did in Vancouver...Edible Canada's Granville Market tour.  I know what you're thinking, I thought the same thing myself, but it was awesome!  My sister, who is a kick-ass travel agent, said that we had to do this.  She had gone a couple years before and loved it.  I was skeptical, but I thought, "Sure, why not".  Holy bananas, it was pretty freaking rad.  The tour started at 9am, so I made Antoine get up super early because I wanted to make sure we weren't late, and I wasn't 100% sure how to get there.  Lucky for us, because we ended up getting a bit lost, but then we found it (the market is, no joke, under a bridge...plus, buses confuse me!) and we waited in the rain for the Edible Canada storefront to open up.

Since it was November and the Friday after Thanksgiving (apparently a good number of locals drive south to Washington state to go shopping), the place was pretty dead.  And we shortly found out that we were the only two people on the tour.  For two hours, our tour-guide Chef Bob (an outstanding guide), took us around the market, talking about food, introducing us to vendors, and, best of all, guiding us through a sampling tour of this killer farmer's market.  I don't have any pictures of the tour because I was too busy stuffing my face with food and laughing and having a good time.  We tasted so many delicious things (smoked salmon maple nuggets, locally roasted coffee, locally produced cheese, warm-out-of-the-oven focaccia, beautiful artisan chocolates, etc.) from so many outstanding vendors that I'd do it again without a second thought.

Antoine and I aren't typically "tour people", we'd prefer to be on our own and go at our own pace.  But we both agreed that this one was phenomenal and we would recommend it to anyone.  ANYONE!  Actually, I think we'd skip the whole "suggesting" and just tell them had to do it!  Also, this is something that is probably one of the best activities to do during the off season.  We were able to get out of the rain, and since it was just the two of us, the tour was super intimate and so much fun.  Plus, the market wasn't as packed.  Though, one word of warning, if you take the tour, make sure to give yourself at least 3 to 4 hours of time, 2 hours for the tour and 1-2 hours to explore, buy some goodies, and maybe have lunch...that's what we did!

I hope you've enjoyed my Vancouver recap.  It's a great place to visit that I'd recommend to pretty much anyone.  I know I'll definitely be going back in the future!