We are now back in the U.K. after the best 2 month holiday of our lives, and it’s time for me to do my last blog post of the USA part of the trip! The final city we visited in America was Seattle, a place I’d always wanted to go to and it definitely lived up to my expectations.
The journey from Portland to Seattle was not without drama. Every time we’ve rented a car this year, we have had an emergency alert that the tire pressure is low. To be fair, I’m not surprised that this happened on this trip, as we had been escorting Big Red through some very bumpy country roads… but it still freaks me out when it happens! We had to drive to a few different gas stations until we found one with an air pump. This is probably not impressive to anyone apart from me but we managed to fill up the tires with zero help! Yay adulthood! We had lunch on the road in Quiznos because they do a yummy gluten free bun for only an extra $1! 
When we arrived at our hotel, we were greeted with a lovely load of dodgy weirdness. There was a blazing row going on in the lobby as we were waiting to check in, but that turned out to be the least of our worries. During the essential bed bug check of our first room, we found small blood stains all over the mattress. In the next room, we found an empty prescription drug cylinder, a fake Chanel purse and a mini weighing scale under the mattress. Nice.
Thankfully, downtown Seattle was a billion times nicer than our hotel. On our first afternoon in the city we visited Pikes Place, home of the first ever Starbucks! It’s also home to a bakery called Cinnamon Works that has tonnes of gluten free and vegan options. Ewan and I shared a cookie that had tofu in it and it was weird but not unenjoyable.
We purchased a CityPass for Seattle because it saves a lot of money if you plan to check out a few of the main tourist attractions while you’re there. Our first attraction on the CityPass was the Aquarium, and it was a really good one. We watched the Giant Octopus being fed which was very cool and I sat watching the beautiful sea otters for ages.
We stopped at nearby Anthony’s restaurant for dinner. It was Happy Hour so we got super cheap meals, the Poke Bowl for Ewan and Mussels for me. The fries are cooked in the same oil as gluten containing items so I subbed in mashed potatoes instead as my side. The happy hour portions were very small but tasty (we MAY have had ‘second dinner’ at McDonalds later that evening….).
Realising the time, we speed walked/trotted from dinner to the Space Needle and managed to make it up to the top just before the sun set and got a stunning 360 degree view of the city. A perfect way to end our first night in the city!
The following morning we headed into town and booked ourselves on the first boat cruise of the day. We had 2 hours to kill before the boat departed so we decided to have a wander around Pioneer Square. To my excitement, we came across a coffee shop called Biscuit Bitch that I had heard about through the gluten-free grapevine and I just had to go in for second breakfast. Biscuit Bitch essentially only really sells coffee and multiple variations of ‘biscuits and gravy’ (for UK readers who are currently imagining a custard cream in a bowl of gravy, the ‘biscuits’ are savoury dumplings!) but it is absolutely worth checking out if you’re nearby. I went for the ‘Straight Up Bitch’ and it was honestly the best comfort food ever. Note: Get there early – they only make 15 gluten free biscuits per day!
It was now almost time for our cruise so I rolled my gravy filled body out of Biscuit Bitch and got on the boat. We scored ourselves seats on the outside deck and basked in the sun while taking in some lovely views of the city. We were super lucky as rain was forecast but we didn’t get a drop!
Even after my 2 breakfasts, I was impressively (or grossly) still ready for lunch when we got off the boat. We had a quick salad bowl in Qdoba then headed to our final City Pass ticket locations; Chihuly Gardens and Glass and the Pop Culture Museum. Chihuly was beautiful and we were able to take loads of pretty pictures.
The Pop Culture Museum was really fun and had so much in it, including a games room where you could play unreleased Nintendo games. Ewan and I challenged two guys to a weird game where you were basically long sausage dogs with human heads chasing after a ball… and we won! Woo! The rest of the Museum is filled with authentic props from movies and unseen, original pictures of artists like David Bowie.
To get back into town we took the Monorail which was a cheap, quick and painless way of traveling and also an easy thing to tick off the Seattle bucket list! We stopped for dinner at our trusty favourite P F Chang’s before heading back to the hotel to sleep our final night in USA for this trip! Super sad but I can say now (over a month after returning) that we had the most incredible summer and it was an insanely amazing holiday that I feel very lucky to have experienced ❤
From Seattle, we headed over the Canadian border into Vancouver and spent a beautiful, chilled out 5 days there before flying back to UK. I’ll be doing a post soon of my top tips for eating/sightseeing in Vancouver!
Gluten Free Piggy 