Memorial Day weekend: King Tut and hiking!

The past two weekends have been quite the blast, so there is a lot to catch up on blog-wise. We'll break it into two posts, starting with the end of May and Memorial Day weekend...

My parents, sister, and brother-in-law came to visit on Friday and Saturday for a family excursion to see the King Tut exhibit at the Pacific Science Center. What a treat! On Friday evening, my folks had dinner with Kris and me at our place; we cooked up some delicious surf-n-turf of steak done on the grill and salmon with asparagus and baby Yukon potatoes. It was quite the feast and we had a great time cooking up a storm.

Getting ready to enter the exhibition!

The fam stayed at a hotel in the U-District, so Kris and I met up with them on the Ave mid-morning on Saturday. We all hopped on a bus to Seattle Center, and we had a little bit of time to walk through some of the exhibits in the Pacific Science Center, as well as walk briefly through the throngs of people at the Folklife Festival that was happening that weekend, before we had to line up for our specified King Tut visit time. 

Once inside, we spend a solid couple of hours walking through the ten exhibit galleries and viewing the various artifacts with awe. It was really amazing to see jewelry, statues, beds, chairs, and ornamental items that had been left in the tombs of the Pharaohs over 3,000 years ago! Some of the artifacts were even close to 5,000 years old. The workmanship and detail of everything was quite incredible, as well as the fact that they were all in such good shape for their age. It was difficult to imagine how different the world would have been way back then, but how beautiful and complex it was nevertheless. Supposedly, Seattle is the exhibit's last stop before it goes back to Egypt a long, long time, if not permanently, so I'm really glad we were all able to see it together. My parents said that this exhibit had many more artifacts than the one in the 70s, and I think they were happy to see the revamped presentation of things so many years later.

Panther head mask!

After our walk through the exhibition, we strolled over to Toulouse Petit in Queen Anne for dinner. Wow, what a fantastic restaurant! The interior decoration is just lovely with lots of candles everywhere and very unique inlaid wood tables, and the food was very well done and tasty. I recommend it, but definitely call ahead for a reservation! It was busy in there.

This figurine was about a foot and a half tall
and had hieroglyphics all over the inside. 

After dinner, we all went to see "The Avengers" in 3D. WHOA! It was hilarious and awesome! We all really enjoyed it, and I would definitely watch that movie again. They did a great job making it fun and action-packed.

When Sunday rolled around, we all met up for a hearty breakfast at Voula's Offshore Cafe near Lake Union. It's a classic U-District breakfast place where you can always count on good eats. After breakfast, my family headed back home and Kris and I drove to his friend's cabin near Mount Rainier. We spent Sunday and Monday hanging out there, going on some hikes around the area and hunting for fresh Morel mushrooms. I had never had fresh Morels before, and they are wicked good. You just bread them and then sautee them and voila! Delicieux. They're quite hard to spot, though luckily, I was the only one in the group with bad eyes and the others gathered plenty for all of us to enjoy and to have extras! It would be fun to go mushroom hunting again sometime, maybe for chanterelles.

After we got back to Seattle, it was four days of worky-work and then another fun weekend. More on that in the next post!