Weekend

This weekend Garrett invited us out to go to a mussel festival in the small town of Coupeville. He was driving up there to meet up with his older brother and his parents, who have a small farm on the other side of the island, and asked us if we wanted to join him. So on Saturday we got up before 7 am and at 7.45 Garrett was waiting outside our apartment building. We had to leave so that we could catch a ferry to Island County, where Coupeville is located, at 9 am.

We had a very scenic drive up to the ferry terminal, and got to know Garrett a little better. He told us that his family is largely of Norwegian heritage, and that his parents still fondly remember the trip they took to Western Norway in the mid-nineties. We asked him if he ever wants to come visit the country, and he said that he was considering it -- though for now he's more interested in visiting major cities on "mainland" Europe.

We reached Coupeville (which indeed turned out to be a tiny town) around 10.30, and while Garrett and his family hopped on a tour boat to visit a local mussel farm at 11 am, Thorsten and I stayed in the city and explored the small stores, walked out on the pier and went for short walk on the beach.

We found it pretty funny that of the handful of stores that the town featured was a minuscule boutique selling, of all things, Dutch food. I guess that was too much of a niche marked for Coupeville, so the owner had also branched out to sell a handful of German, French and Scandinavian items (including buttons that said The Cook is Norwegian, and UFF DA!, t-shirts stating Oma is the Best / Opa is the Best, Nestlé chocolates, lingonberry jam, Gummibärchen, Spätzle, Katzenzungen, Kinder chocolates and more). The Dutch isles also features some Indonesian food, interestingly enough.

For lunch we didn't go to the restaurant that Garrett's parents had recommended, as it was absolutely packed, but instead went up the street a little and found a fancy-looking restaurant. There we (evidently) had mussels steamed in white wine with home-made bread, half a bottle of white wine, and a shared piece of chocolate cake with salted caramel sauce for the dessert.

While Thorsten was in the bathroom, the rather formal-looking waitress came over to our table, poured me a centimetre of wine and looked expectantly at me. Having no idea what I was doing, I lifted the glass, hesitated for a second (was a supposed to swirl it around and look at the colour or something or would that be TOO much?) , sniffed it unconvincingly, took a sip and (feeling ridiculous) said "yes, yes, it's very nice." She looked pleased with my answer and filled both our glassed. To my great relief she went away after that.

Thorsten was happy enough with the meal, but I thought it was boring and tasteless. The mussels didn't taste much, the bread was greasy and sweet, and the cake looked inviting but tasted sugary and bland. The caramel sauce had some flavour, but it wasn't enough to save the cake.

Well, at least it was expensive. Though, it should be said, the waitress was friendly and the restaurant had a relaxed and inviting atmosphere.

I went to the bathroom as we were leaving, and found a few reviews of the restaurant hanging on the wall. A lot of glowing, flattering descriptions that didn't really match my impression of the food. Most bizarre of all was the description of the very same cake I had just been unimpressed with, which a critic described as The Best Cake He Had Ever Eaten and Simply Awesome ("... and I don't often use words as strong as these"). This was a few years ago, so I wonder if they forgot how to make it since then.

After the meal we walked around for a while, and around 1 pm met up with Garrett to head home. Again we took the ferry over to the mainland, but this time we took a different route home as he had an errand to run in Seattle. While the trip to Coupeville took us some two hours, the drive home lasted three hours with the stop in Seattle. The traffic in the city was insane, and again we wondered how on earth people manage to put up with this on a daily basis...

Also, to us it was a bit absurd to drive for five hours in all to spend two and a half hours at some place. Obviously we didn't tell Garrett this as he was doing us a big favour by inviting us out like this.

As I had fallen asleep at 4 am something the very same morning (my brain sometimes does this to me when I have to get up early), I was pretty beat by the time we were home. We had a simple dinner consisting of cheese sandwiches and raw veggies, watched a nature documentary and went to bed too late (as is our wont).

The next day we got up rather late, and Thorsten soon went out in the park to do his 4.5km of running. He is still taking it easy as he's already gotten injured once and doesn't want to do too much too fast (again). Meanwhile, I stayed in for a while, but while Thorsten took a nap I too went to the park to run. I was feeling good and my legs were fine again, so this time I went for seven rounds -- some 10 km, my longest run since I got back on the horse again in February. Having learned that i have to take it slow to last more than a few rounds, I took it easy and spent almost an hour on the distance.

In the afternoon I cleaned up the apartment a bit while Thorsten went grocery shopping for me, and later we carried a giant pile of recycling down to the containers on the parking lot. The reason for this uncharacteristic bout of cleaning was that we had a guest in the evening: Ross was coming over for dinner.

By 7 pm my coq au vin was just finishing up and the potatoes were almost done, and Thorsten took the elevator down to the lobby to let in our guest.

Again we spent a very nice evening together. Ross talked about his job in military, and we were flabbergasted to hear what his schedule looks like. He gets up at 5 am something, has semi-compulsory PT (exercise -- or Physical Therapy) at work in Seattle at 6-7, starts working around 9, and isn't done at work before 6 pm. Work officially ends at 4 pm, but it is considered bad form to leave early -- so most people stay another couple of hours. He is home again at 7 pm at the earliest at which point he says his biggest challenge is to manage to eat something before he passes out in his bed.

Unlike most people he does get some four-five weeks of vacations a year, and 3-4 day weekends fairly often (Garrett gets two-three weeks of vacations a year, something that is considered completely normal). Still, he understandably says he's done with these insane (and, completely unnecessarily long) days and can't wait to be done.

It was almost midnight when Ross drove home, and I was a little sorry we had "kept" him there so long, as I knew he had a long day ahead of him today...

All in all a interesting weekend in good company.

A few pictures from our trip: