Merrily Merrily Merrily Merrily

Part of getting settled in Seattle was building up my network of email lists and news outlets so that I know every awesome thing that is happening in the state at all times. One of my little birdies informed me that the Center for Wooden Boats was letting people book free one our rentals of their peapod rowboats. Now, I didn't know what a peapod boat was but I do know what free is, so I signed us up.

The center was really cool. It's sort of like a living museum, as not only are they displaying historical things in their building but they give lessons on sailing and that sort of thing, plus I saw some guys either building or restoring boats as well. These people are serious about boats.

It was a cold windy day in Seattle so it was funny to put a lifejacket over my heaviest winter coat.

There are all sorts of historically important boats docked with little blurb signs on them docked all over the place.

Well, it did kind of look like a peapod. After a scarily fast intro on how to pilot the boat and where to avoid on Lake Union we were set loose.

I've been the captain of numerous canoes and kayaks so I thought rowing a boat would be a piece of cake. I think it's a lot harder than either of those things. For one thing you have your back turned to the direction you're moving which is kind of awkward. Second you have two paddles so you have to concentrate on rowing the same strength at the same time so that you move in a straight line. Maybe the hardest thing of all was keeping the oars within their little ring things attached to the boat. The oars are really heavy so you are really lifting them off the boat so much as twirling them around. It was a lot of work.

They gave us a phone number to call if we got stranded somewhere and said that happened fairly frequently, so I was determined to not turn into one of those suckers. Once we got into the open water the wind was strong enough that we could barely make any headway against it, so we sort of stuck to moving around in the harbor area. It was fun but I don't think we stayed the full hour.

We hopped over to see what was up at Lagunitas Taproom & Beer Sanctuary.

Unsurprisingly what was happening was people were drinking beer.

We had dinner in Ballard's La Carta de Oaxaca, a froufrou Mexican place. It was fine but I thought it was too expensive for what you got.

I had "Mole’ Negro Oaxaqueño: The house specialty. Black mole’ with chicken or pork ribs, white rice and corn tortillas." I think I went with the chicken version. Mole is always fun.

We had second dinner at Hot Cakes Molten Chocolate Cakery. Lava cake seems to be more of a thing here than I've seen before. Maybe people just like warm treats since it can be so gloomy here.