My sister and her husband drove up to Seattle from Northern California this last week for a visit. It was so fun having them here. Of course the moment they arrived our Betta fish, Paolo dropped dead. It is a mystery what happened, but I have a feeling my cat Jiffy might have some idea.

On the first day, my sister and I played Seattle tourist while Sasha was at work and my brother-in-law stayed home & rested. First stop, you guessed it, the Space Needle.

She had never been up, so we shelled out our cash and went up, up, up. After soaking in the view of the entire Pacific Northwest, we settled in for a cup of coffee & sisterly conversation 520 feet off the ground. We were checking out the people and assuming most were probably from a foreign county or vacationing from somewhere exotic like Missouri. We tried to guess where people were from and saw two men who were clearly from France. We ended up running into these men again on the second portion of our day as tourists; on the monorail.

I joked that we should follow them, because they are clearly following the Seattle Tourism handbook and would make sure we did it right, but we ended up losing them in the mall.

After shopping around downtown for awhile, we headed for the next tourist stop, the Pike Place Market. This is the famous open air market where vendors sell their wares and you can also buy fresh fruit, flowers, etc. It is probably most known for its fish market where they literally toss large, fresh salmon around to each other and catch them to the amazement of the out-of-towners. I positioned us next to the Monkfish, which is an ugly-ass-fish attached to a pulley that the fish throwers will yank to scare the crap out of unsuspecting patrons.

I was hoping they would do it for my sister�s benefit, but instead they threw an 80 pound salmon directly at us, smacking my sister square in the chest. We screamed in horror and then delight when we realized it was actually just a stuffed piece of fabric resembling a Chinook salmon. Wacky fish throwers.

After all the excitement, we were ready for some lunch, so of course we headed over to the restaurant where they filmed part of the film: �Sleepless in Seattle�. We could not believe it when the waitress sat us directly behind the Frenchmen, who must have thought we were totally following them. I had my sister take this stealth photo of them:

Before heading home, I made my sister try Bubble Tea for the first time. I got mine with apple jelly & she got hers with mango jelly, which is basically jell-o on the bottom of an already sweet drink.

STAY TUNED FOR SISTER VISIT PART TWO: KARAOKE BOOGALOO

Space Holder. - February 12, 2012

BEAUTIFUL BOY - August 26, 2011

COUNTDOWN - July 13, 2011

SEXAY - June 16, 2011

BACKWARDS AND FORWARDS - May 30, 2011