Mucho Visits

I've had a number of visitors at the end of the summer and been INSANELY busy w/ my stupid job so I haven't posted much lately.  Now to remedy that situation!
My brother and his lady friend came up for a visit a few weeks ago.  I think they were big fans of Seattle after leaving the soulless city of Houston, or as he calls it, the giant parking lot.  The weather was great, cool and breezy and just a nice time to be outside.
A quick rundown of some of the stuff we did:
When they first got here Jennifer had to sleep seeing as how she'd been up for about 24 hours (note to self, do not work the night shift) so we went out and grabbed some dinner without her.  I took him over to Quinn's and he loved it.  Of course.  I don't think there any way that you couldn't love that place.  We went to town on some frites, pork, bone marrow, wild boar sloppy Joes, and a pretzel.  And many tasty beers.  The next day I took them downtown so they could see the standard required tourist areas, Pike's Place, the first Starbucks, etc.  We walked through the Seattle Art Museum so they could see the cars ASPLODE WITH HAPPINESS as I like to call them.  I thought I took some pics of them but I seem to have not done so.  Oh well.
After that we went over to the Sculpture Park and walked around some.

Awesome silver tree

The Eagle

Thing of some sort.

That night L came back from Hippy Camp where she had miraculously managed to not eat any of the hippies since they made her eat vegetarian for a few days.  We headed over to Elemental Next Door (END) Wine Bar.  This place was fantastic.  It was attached to Elemental but a little more laid back I think.  http://www.elementalatgasworks.com/end.html  This place was awesome, they gave us bubbly when we sat down and the way you choose your wine from the wine list is by walking along the wall and grabbing whichever bottle looks good.  The food was fantastic too, we had a ton of stuff and it was all great.  Will definitely be going back to this place.  Soon.  Oh, and they had really fun light fixtures too:

The menu that night was on a huge piece of paper at the door.  The easiest way to study it was on my phone... 

The lights have wooden veneer over them.  Really cool...

The next day we went on a tour of the Theo Chocolate Factory! http://www.theochocolate.com/contact-us/group-tours-events.php

Magic tanks full of chocolate...

Soon to be turned into happiness...

Our tour guide.

After the tour we drove out into the mountains.  We wanted to go to taste some wines but the tasting rooms were closed by the time we were through w/ the tour so we just went to see some scenery...

Misty Mountains 

Huge trees but it's kind of hard to tell here.

Spooky fog

Mountain brook

That tree was HUGE.  

 That was about it w/ them.  My next visitor was here the following weekend and we did some girlier stuff like going to the ballet!  But first we went to Oktoberfest in Freemont and then to my new favorite bar, The Backdoor at Roxy's.

The Backdoor

Waiting for the ballet to begin

The beautiful theatre 

Love love love the chandelier in the lobby

We saw the Pacific Northwest Ballet's production of All Wheeldon and had a great time:

http://www.pnb.org/Season/11-12/AllWheeldon/#Media

We went for dinner after the ballet at Wild Ginger.  Best. Potstickers.  EVAR.  http://www.wildginger.net/  They were open late which was nice.  This town seems to go to bed kind of early...

Ok, that pretty much wraps up the highlights of the last few weeks or so.  My next post will probably be from back home since I'm headed south for a friend's wedding.  And I already have tickets to see MuteMath at Chelsea's and CAN'T WAIT.  http://chelseascafe.com/