Rebecca and Regina Visit

Our good friends from NC and Boston, Rebecca and Regina, came to visit en route to their family vacation to Vancouver and the Canadian National Parks.  Thankfully, both Tina and I had the day off, so we tried our best to show them around.

Regina and I are unofficially non-traveling-together travel buddies.  As in, we've seen each other in so many different places around the world, not having traveled there together.  Here is a quick rundown of those places:

Cleveland, July 2007.

Not pictured: Princeton, October 2007.

Shanghai, July 2008.

Taipei, January 2009.

Chapel Hill, July 2009.

New York, December 2009.

And now, Seattle, August 2012.

We went to Pike Place Market, and they decided to get some coffee from the original Starbucks.  I think they were pretty happy about it.  We also went to Piroshky, Piroshky, Pike Place Clam Chowder, and did some walking around.

Then we took them to Kerry Park for the nice view of the city.  This was the obligatory city skyline photo.

The circles sculpture is where their true personalities came out.

We then went to the Ballard Locks to see the salmon swimming upstream in preparation for mating season.  I think Regina was more interested in how she could look like a gargoyle or a Tim Burton character atop these interesting sculptures.  Tina was the one who told Regina to pose, but she was thinking more along the lines of this:

Close enough, I guess.

We also made it to Pho Bac in the International District for dinner.  It was good, but there was too much MSG in the soup.  It made me very thirsty afterwards.  We also took them to Molly Moon's for ice cream.  I think the Earl Grey flavor it was a hit, especially with Rebecca.  It's quite good!