Greek food, flowers, a troll and locks.

It was a beautiful day in the neighborhood. The neighborhood of Seattle, that is. Steve and I headed down to the big city this morning...

Right off the bat we totally scored a parking place right around the block from Pike Place Market. We had a nice leisurely stroll through the market - it was only a little crowded. We picked up some spanakopita and baklava for lunch, bought some flavored honey to take home (we buy some every time we go...which fortunately isn't too often) and two large bouquets of flowers ( at $5 a bouquet I could have bought more...) and then we headed back to the car.

Our next stop was the Fremont Troll...we only had to cross the bridge twice to find it. It was almost a case of "you can't get there from here"...but we persevered and found it.

Hiram M. Chittenden Locks were next. We watched 3 different boats being raised or lowered in the two different locks. There was only one fish in the fish ladder, but hey, it could have been worse.

Our final stop was Top Ten Toys. It's too far away from home to go very often, and it would be expensive to take kids there - so it was nice to go while we were in the neighborhood, without kids. It leans more towards educational/imaginative toys and books...they don't have a video game section, there is no "Barbie" section, no "Hot Wheels", no Disney. After drooling a little over their large selection of Playmobil, I ended up getting Stephanie a pack of activity cards - 100 activities to do with small children in the car...hopefully it will help with their cross-country car trip coming up soon.

It was a beautiful day in the neighborhood.