75. See Sammi Estevez while she's in Washington & 28. Go to Seattle Underground Tour

Last Friday, I had the pleasure of meeting up with the one and only Sammi Estevez. I haven't written about our adventure until now because I left my camera at home. Sammi, her sister, Alexandra, and I did too many awesome things to not have pictures accompany this post, so I waited til Sammi posted pics on facebook and I stole them from her.  -- So, thanks Sammi for the cool pictures!

Our day started at Pioneer Square. We decided to take the famous Underground Tour of Seattle. Yes, for those of you who aren't familiar with Seattle history, parts of Seattle's financial district have underground "tunnels" (if you will). The reason? When Seattle was founded, the area was at sea level. As you could guess, this could propose a lot of potential problems. 1. being the tide 2. being the sewage. So, once the city burned down in the late 19th century, the city of Seattle decided to build up the roads in order to help alleviate the sewage problem, but the businesses decided they couldn't wait long enough so as they were building their businesses, the city was building up the roads. They met in the middle, and created these underground tunnels -- or basement storefronts.

Here are some pictures:

                                                                         Me & Sammi

         A toliet - this was a huge problem. With the tide, often times, the stuff you left in the toilet when you'd flush, would come up to hit you in the face...

                                                                      Some of the store fronts

After our very informative tour, we went to tour the Theo chocolate factory. However, tickets for the tour were all sold out. So, instead, we went around this room and tasted all of the chocolate. They had a 90% pure dark chocolate bar --- it was the most bitter thing I've ever tasted. I chased it down with the delicious milk chocolate.

Afterwards, we went to lunch (I don't have pictures of lunch). And then we took a walk around Fremont. We went under the bridge to see the troll and stood at the center of the universe! Boy was it a busy day!

                                                               This thing was HUGE! Look at the left hand... Do you see the car?

Overall, it was a wonderful day. I sometimes get overwhelmed at the thought of how far away the west coast is from all of our friends and family on the east coast. But, meeting up with friends on their random trips to the west coast make living out here a lot easier. Both John and I are very thankful that we now live in a part of the country worth visiting (unlike when we were in Missouri). So, if you think these pictures look cool, you should come see the sites in person. I am now an expert in finding the center of the universe, the troll under the bridge, and parts of Seattle history.