. bellingham/seattle spring break getaway .

Mom, Melissa, and I got away for a few days at the beginning of our Spring Break week. We headed up to Bellingham on Saturday to visit Melissa’s college roommate, Jennifer Zaremba. She showed us a great time around Bellingham, shopping, great food, and seeing the sights. She and Melissa wanted to take these pictures with the Bellingham sign!

She hosted us in her cute house looking over the water. Thanks Jenn!

On our way back toward Seattle, we detoured through Marysville to see the flowers in bloom. The tulip fields weren’t in bloom yet, but we got to see some striking daffodil fields. We all said for not even liking daffodils, it was beautiful!

We stopped to shop a little bit at the Seattle Premium Outlets and then found our hotel where we’d stay for the rest of our time in Seattle.

On Monday, we did some shopping around our hotel: Ulta and Nordstrom Rack. We’d spied a Blue C Sushi the night before and were excited to try out conveyor belt sushi!

I’m not a fancy sushi connoisseur, but this wasn’t the best sushi I’ve ever had. It was a fun experience to just pick out what we wanted off the conveyor belt. Fun concept.

Each color plate was a different price…

And, our favorite: California Roll.

From there, we went to our favorite little stamp store in Greenlake – A Muse. It’s a must stop whenever we have the chance. Then we went on a little Seattle tourist adventure. Melissa wanted to see the Fremont troll, so we put the address into our iPhone map and went on our way (thank goodness for the iPhone maps – we used the heck out of it!).

This troll was crazy huge! It’s holding a Volkswagen Bug in it’s hand!

Melissa got to check an item off her bucket list!

The next stop on our tourist adventure was Gasworks Park…

Melissa wanted to take her picture jumping in Gasworks park! Check!

It was raining and kinda foggy looking at the Seattle skyline!

Our next destination was a quilt shop in Ballard that I’d found online. On our way there, we passed a group of statues that we’d seen last year on the Ride the Ducks tour. Melissa got a picture with them (of course! ).

The quilt shop: The Quilting Loft: was a successful find! It was a cute shop with lots of current fabric lines, patterns, kits, and samples. It was a little overwhelming! I got a fat quarter bundle and a pattern. I would definitely like to go back there next time we’re in town!

And bonus – there was a cute boutique right next door, so Melissa was happy too! (and pretty happy about her first Starbucks birthday cake pop!)

We went to see “Black Swan” that night at a $3 theater….and wasted our $3. I can appreciate the acting and see why Natalie Portman won the Oscar for Best Actress, but the movie as a whole was not our style at all. Way to pick them, Mom!

Tuesday morning, we a little earlier start and headed straight for Pike Place Market.

First stop: the Flagship Starbucks, of course!

We walked through the Market, found a delicious doughnut, and found the golden pig:

I showed Mom & Melissa where the Gum Wall was and left our mark!

So gross, but so intriguing!

We headed straight for the flagship Nordstrom from there. Melissa and I had been planning to buy TOMS shoes there and it was a great day to buy them! TOMS was sponsoring a day of no shoes in honor of those that don’t have shoes. There was a walk around Nordstrom that was just finishing up while Mom & Melissa were trying theirs on.

Melissa found some black sparkly ones and Mom got gray.

We went downstairs to the men’s section so I could get mine (embarrassing!) – I got gray and red. I couldn’t decide!!

We went to lunch at the Nordstrom Café and had delicious salads. We’d never eaten there, but had heard how good it was…and it was great! We shopped around Nordstrom and each left with some fun finds!

We headed to U Village from there to stop at Sephora, Anthropologie, Victoria’s Secret, Brighton, and H & M.

Melissa stopped for a photo op with her new black and white houndstooth wellies.

We got pedicures that evening – so nice after shopping all day! – and picked up pizza to take back to our hotel. Perfect ending to a great day!

The next morning, we loaded up and headed to the UW Medical Center for Mom’s appointments. She had a CT scan and then met with her surgeon, Dr. Mokadam, for him to explain the results of the scan. Two years after her emergency surgery, everything still looks great! We are grateful that her doctors take such great care of her and stay on top of everything.

We began our trek home – a little later than we’d expected because we had to wait for Dr. Mokadam to get out of the OR. Melissa had wanted to go to The Cheesecake Factory in Bellevue, but I didn’t want to get home so late….well, jokes on me because we were stopped on Snoqualmie Pass for over 2 hours for avalanche control. We could’ve definitely had lunch in that time! Even after waiting all that time, it was slow going the rest of the way. Bummer!

Look how much snow there was! We drove through rain, sleet, snow, and sun…yuck!

Next year, I totally want to go somewhere with warmer weather – no rain, NO SNOW!

We had such a wonderful time exploring new sights and experiencing old familiar favorites…and with great company, who could ask for more?!