The tail end of Seattle may be a little hazy thanks to the Pyramid Alehouse and a few subsequent beers at the Mariners game, but the day we spent in the city prior to that was a great finish to the trip.

Seattle is beautiful.  We had no idea until we got downtown and visited Pike Place Market and made our trek through downtown.  A part of me wishes we’d stayed downtown and gotten more exposure to all that was there, but in the end, I think everything worked out really well.

We stayed outside the city in Renton, half of us staying at Dave’s apartment, the other half getting a hotel room.  The driving was a little weird out there, since they seem to really like those raised reflectors embedded in the street rather then painting lines, but all in all it was a nice little suburb.

Dave lives (and I am in no way condemning this, we loved it) in what I can only describe as a retirement community for millennials.  By this I mean he was in a massive apartment building and surrounded by a shopping plaza with a Target, Regal, a World of Beer, some other stuff nobody cares about, and a restaurant called the Rock that will serve you a margarita in a bucket.  We now have two buckets in my house.  We would have more but I’m a little bitch and stuck to beer, and they cut Bridgett off after two.

Dave’s whole complex or whatever non-creepy way they refer to it was nice.  It had everything you could need and, best of all for us (after the 400+ beers available at World of Beer), we were pretty close to the Tukwila train station.  Our train took straight through a mountain and into the city itself.  Getting off at the University Station we made our way down to the fish market.

Or, more accurately, the Starbucks across from the fish market.  It was early, give us a break; after nearly a week of traveling we were finally feeling fluent in Pacific time.  Gone were the early, early mornings where we’d translate the time to Eastern to justify our ungodly alertness.  No, we were on the right time now, and we weren’t particularly happy about it.

So Starbucks it was.  But not the first Starbucks.  Across from the fish market there are two Starbucks locations, the original one with the first logo that shows a topless mermaid that Starbucks no longer uses.  Because its perfectly fine to show rape and murder, blood and guts, entrails pouring out of people, to swear and make dick jokes until even my friends are sick of them, all on television, but a brown etching-style illustration of a two-tailed mermaid with nipples?  Nipples?!  That’s crossing a line.

The nipples location has a line out the door and down the block at all hours, so anyone who actually wants to drink a cup of coffee rather then Instagraming a picture of one, goes to the corner of  1st & Pike where they can buy Seattle skyline mugs and have their Caramel Macchiatos made wrong.  I had three days training in a cafe four years ago, and even I remember that the venti gets three shots.  Its one of the only drinks that gets three for a venti, that’s why if you order a latte or whatever, you’re getting scammed, its the same number of shots as a grande just more milk.  I’m just saying.  Face it Starbucks, at 1st & Pike, you should be bringing your A game, not this weak ass macchiato shit.

Before we made it into the Fish Market itself we had to take a disgusting detour.  I just spent a week on the road with six other guys, none of us our shy about bowel movements, having them or talking about them; we even went into a sea lion cave, which is only slightly less sanitary then our hotel bathrooms, and I am still calling this the most disgusting sight of the trip: the Gum Wall.

I’m serious, that’s all gum. You’re all disgusting.

Something about it just turns my stomach, but I will agree, it is a sight one needs to see while in Seattle.  Legend has it the guy who owned the Market Theater on Post Alley hated when kids would chew gum during the shows, so he’d kick them out.  They’d walk out of the theater, turn the corner and stick their gum to the wall, and return to the show.  At least thats the story I overheard down there and then prompted retold.

Monkey see, monkey do, and now there’s a perfectly good building covered in gum; stuck and dripping, melted in the hot sun and running together, shiny in the misty rain.  Its disgusting.  Go see it.

Back around the corner and up the spaceman steps is the Fish Market proper.  Your first stop?  Pay homage to the golden pig.  Then turn around because the stall directly in front of the pig has the best fish throwers down there.  After that, good luck.

I can’t begin to tell you about the awesome shops and stalls throughout the market; the fish, the flowers, the beautiful artwork from local artists, the terrible chotchkie probably from China, the vintage poster shop on the lower level, the nerd store with a wall of bobbleheads, the magic shop I didn’t go in, all the bookstores I did go in, the pickle stand, the creepy little gnome statue, even the mosaic silhouettes outside the restrooms.  You have to go down there, you have to see it all, you have to smell it all, its all amazing.

Here’s one thing there you should check out, and I’m telling you about it because I overheard that it was new, and that a lot of people miss it.  Standing in front of the the golden pig’s ass you head to your ten o’clock, go around a corner and follow these red arrows that are high up on the wall pointing you to the locked door of Maximilien Restaurant.  I don’t know if it was supposed to be locked, if its always locked, or if Max was just messing with us that day, but this is where you need to pay attention.  There will be a short hallway to your left before the locked door of Maximilien’s (seriously, there were just eight signs, a mannequin and big neon arrows pointing me to this restaurant, and the door is locked?  There are people inside, I can see you, you can’t hide from me).  Ignore Max’s, go back and head down that hallway.

This will take you outside to a new community garden, with a creepy pig chair, a lot of bamboo and wash basins used at planting pots, with a replica of the golden pig that is black and has chalk hanging from his butt.  Also, it has the best view of Elliott Bay, Bainbridge Island and the Puget Sound you’ll ever see.  Or it might just seem that way after fighting through those crowds in the fish market.

This is where we ate lunch, along with Carl, the labradoodle, who raced around the garden like he’d never been let free to run before, but always answered immediately to his name.

Lunch was from Jack’s Fish Spot, a quick meal of fresh crab salad, scallops, prawns (that honestly, I expected to be bigger but nevertheless were delicious) and fries so gloriously fried and dripping with amazing fishy grease that even I couldn’t finish them, no matter how badly I wanted to.  My stomach had already begun gurgling with the warnings of a deep fried shit I would be in no position to take given the lack of available restrooms once we got walking through the city again.

We were getting on towards the meeting time with our group to leave the market and continue our adventure through the remarkably clean streets of downtown Seattle.  Seriously, the place was immaculate.

And look, I told you we aren’t shy about talking about our bowels, I won’t apologize for it now.  I will talk about it to you, I just won’t talk to you while I’m doing these things.  That’s a rule, no matter how many times Kevin tries to get me to.  See, on Baseball Trip there are two constant and eternal concerns that the sooner you come to terms with, the better for everyone, and if you’ve read this far, I’m assuming you have…  They are:

“Can I poop here?”

And, “Where can I charge my phone?”