Seattle Day 2 – Sci-Fi Museum, Ivar’s and Von’s Roasthouse

Today started out as a lazy day, Dave and I slept in, and slept in well.  After finally dragging our asses out of bed and figuring out what we would do for the day, we decided that we needed to start out the day at Top Pot Donuts, just a block over from our hotel.  Top Pot claiming to have the best coffee and donuts in town did not let me down.  The coffee tasted like coffee and the donuts were to say the least…. GIANT!  I didn’t get a picture of any of them, but we will be going back.  Dave being the coffee snob that he is though didn’t feel the roast lived up to his local back in Edmonton, but I have much less discriminating tastes when it comes to coffee.  It it doesn’t taste burnt like Star Bucks, and tastes like coffee flavoured coffee, I am a happy camper!

From there we proceeded to walk over to the Sci-Fi Museum and the Experience Music Project.  $15 entry fee gets you into both exhibits in this very cool Frank Gehry designed building.  If you are even remotely a Sci-Fi nerd or fan rock you HAVE to come here.  Even if you aren’t it is still a decent way to spend about 4 hours.  Neither exhibit are overly large, but they are well worth the fee.  I have pictures, and will post them later once I have a chance to process them in this blog entry, but for now you’ll just have to wait in anticipation…  If you actually read my blog!

Following the museum, we meandered back to the hotel and chilled for a bit to rest out weary feet and figure out what we wanted to do for dinner.  A friend back in Vancouver, Steve recommended that we try a restaurant called Ivars (specifically the Acres of Clams establishment) and get the Cajun Fish and Chips.  Both Dave and I did get the fish and chips in the sit down restaurant, they have a take out on the outside, but just went with the normal 4 piece and a local Stout which was very good.  The fish was lightly breaded, and came with a decent amount of fries which I only ate a portion over after chowing down on a couple of fresh hot rolls and butter first.  The fish though, I believe it was cod, but don’t quote me on that, was very good and not greasy at all.  If you want a simple fish and chip meal, and a tasty pint this should be on your list.  Ivar’s have 3 other restaurants with different menus, which you might want to check out as well.  I have heard pretty good things about the  Salmon House as well which is part of the Ivar’s (clickable) chain.

Next up was drinks with Heidi, a friend of Dave and I’s from back home in Toronto during our Pesudo days.  Dave and I wandered by a bar the night before called Von’s Roasthouse (clickable) which claimed to have around 1000 spirts, and believe me, after being in the bar and seeing the back wall, I’d believe it.  They also have a very good selection of draughts and I enjoyed a few pints of another local beer called Maritime Red Ale, and at $4.50 a pint I was not complaining one little bit!  Dave and I are pretty sure we will be heading back there every night.  The drinks were very affordable, and while we didn’t eat there the food that went by looked very good, and the prices were reasonable.  Lining their dining room walls were taps of all shapes and sizes, and leading to the washrooms in the back there have bags of some form of wood chips to take home for free for smoking meat!  I’ll be sure to pick up a bag on my next outing there.  Also if you are a fan of hard cinnamon flavoured candy they’ve got a bucket of these rock hard cinnamon balls at the front door that rock, they are way hotter then cinnamon hearts!

Stay tuned for pictures, I’ll have them posted in a couple days at the latest at the bottom of this post!