Seattle Scenery

The Palisade Restaurant is located in Seattle in the Magnolia area, off of Elliott Bay. The restaurant offers free parking and even free valet parking. This restaurant is located next to a marina and has beautiful views of the Seattle Skyline.

When you walk into the Palisades you are greeted by the relaxing sounds of a stream. There is a walkway that crosses over the pond and the stream even runs alongside the pathway into the dining area. The pond is lined with orchids and plants growing on the large rocks beside the water. The entry has natural stone on the flooring that adds to the outdoor effects alongside the water feature.

The food and the service have been outstanding every time that we have visited. The menu offers mostly seafood entrees but they offer some red meat and chicken selections also. I’ve ordered the halibut cheeks twice now, both times it was superb. My boyfriend ordered the stuffed prawns the last visit and they were excellent also. The dessert was marvelous, we ordered a chocolate truffle cake and it was definitely chocolaty and very smooth. Everything that we’ve tried at Palisade has been exceptional and has left us wanting more.

This is a great restaurant for a romantic dinner. The Palisade has large windows that overlook Elliott Bay and the surrounding marina. While dining at the Palisade, you can gaze out at boats traveling across the bay. After dinner you can end your evening out by taking a stroll down the paved walkway in front of the restaurant that overlooks the water. This is a great way to unwind and to take advantage of the beautiful scenery outside.

There are several Anthony’s Homeport locations throughout Washington State. They even opened a restaurant in Bend, Oregon recently. Most of the Anthony’s restaurant locations are on the water. I have two favorite locations one is in Des Moines and the other is at Shilshole Bay in Seattle. The Shilshole Bay Anthony’s location overlooks the beautiful Bay and the spectacular Olympic Mountains. This location offers free parking for customers and even has outdoor seating in the summer time.

The menu at Anthony’s consists mostly of seafood items and they usually offer a few steak selections too. Most of the dinners served at Anthony’s come with either your choice of chowder or a salad and fresh baked bread. This is the best place to try the crab cakes appetizer. It contains mostly crab meat then is rolled in bread crumbs and it is served with a plum and a beurre blanc sauce garnished with pickled ginger. I’ve learned not to even order crab cakes anywhere else because they are never as good as the ones at Anthony’s.

The dinners that I’ve had at Anthony’s have always been fabulous. Their dining room has large windows that overlook the bay and every table in the restaurant has some sort of a view. No matter where you sit you’re going to enjoy the scenery. The service has always been good and the food has never been short of excellent. This is a great place to go for a romantic evening out or for a nice dinner with some friends.

Gas Works Park is located on Lake Union in Seattle. The 20 acre park was originally a plant to manufacture gas from coal, then later it was converted to crude oil. This plant became obsolete in the 1950s when natural gas became available.

The city of Seattle bought the property in 1962. The park was finally opened to the public in 1975. There were lots of conversion that took place in order for the park to open the public; the boiler house was converted to a picnic shelter with tables and the preceding exhauster-compressor building is now a children's play barn. There is still large rusty graffiti covered machinery on the grounds of Gas Works which creates the historical centerpiece of this park.

This park may sound strange but it has been featured in the movie Ten Things I Hate about You and is one of the best places to fly a kite in Seattle and watch the 4th of July fireworks show on Lake Union from. Other than the machinery it is basically one large grassy hill that overlooks the boaters on Lake Union and the Seattle Skyline.

The Bite of Seattle is a mouth watering experience where you can taste samplings of food from over 60 different restaurants and snack vendors for a fee at each vendor. This is one of Seattle’s largest summer celebrations. There are several outdoor stages and different performers who play all weekend long and it's usually good and free entertainment.

The Bite of Seattle was first started in 1982 at Greenlake. In 1986 the festival was moved to the Seattle Center and now attracts over 400,000 people in one single weekend. The event is held at the end of July.

This isn’t the place to come if you want to experience the best of Seattle’s dining but they do have some fun things to try. Kathy Casey usually has a wonderful food set up with different restaurants basically preparing samplings of a meal. One vendor will usually have a sampling of a soup or a salad, then a few others will have an appetizer, then finally when you get to the end of the serving center and one vendor will have some sort of a dessert. This is my favorite exhibits at the Bite of Seattle and it’s fairly cheap to get the whole meal rather than piecing it together at all of the different vendors elsewhere.

My advice is if you want to go to The Bite of Seattle go early in the day. This will help you avoid the crowds and it's usually hard to find parking unless you're willing to pay a premium price.

Safeco field is the ballpark for Mariners baseball in Seattle. Safeco Field has been home to the Mariners since July 1999. Before Safeco came into existence the Kingdome was home to the Mariners for over 20 years.

Safeco Field acquired its name from a local Seattle Company named “Safeco Corporation” which bought rights to have the stadium named after them for $40 million.

The ballpark has an interesting one of a kind retractable roof. The roof is designed with three movable panels, that open and close at the touch of a button. The roof is powered by electric motors and the panels slide on steel wheels, the downside is it takes approximately 15 minutes to open or close the structure.

One of the best seats at the game is at the Hit It Here Café, which is a restaurant that has seating and tables that run parallel to the 1st to 2nd base line. It has a great view of home plate and in addition to being at a ball game you get a voucher for their food. Of course you pay more for these seats but it’s well worth it.

The regular seats are fine too. There are plenty of food concession stands around every corner of this ballpark, there is even a Ben and Jerry’s that serves world famous ice-cream. Just bring plenty of money if you want to eat at the game, the prices are outrageous and by the time you pay for your entire meal you will have concluded that you could have eaten at a nice steakhouse down the street for less.

This is a great ballpark to visit on a warm summer day. When the roof is open there are incredible views of the Seattle Skyline and it’s occasionally soothing to hear some of the faint outside noises of trains and ships blowing their horns as they pass by. No matter where you sit in this stadium you will feel like you’re part of the game.