Seattle City Center Day Trip

After breakfast, we stopped by Costco to pick up some snacks for Arkensen. This is his first trip that he will be all by himself.

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We shared a twisted churos from Costco. It is flavoured with cinnamon sugar. I find that it was dry. Arkensen had most of it as he did not eat anything for breakfast.

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Nanzaro wanted to try the ice latte which I find too sweet.

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After shopping at Costco, we proceeded our journey to Seattle City Center. Arkensen wanted to pick up his ticket and pre-ordered stuff from Key Arena so that he does not have to rush the next morning for the event.

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The Secret Shop is where he picked up his pre-order items. Last year, he lined up for 5 hours to buy stuff from Secret Shop. It was a great idea to have the pre-order this year.

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Arkensen told us that this year’s event price pool money has exceeded 18 millions. I just can’t believe computer games can generate such a big money event. (more…)

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Denny’s in Bellingham, WA

On on of our cross border shopping trip, we had breakfast at Denny’s in Bellingham. We were there early to beat the long border line up.

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There were not many restaurants open at this early hour, around 6:30AM.

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Coffee for all, including Nanzaro. I think we had too much coffee for the day as we already had coffee at home. All of us felt light headed afterwards during our shopping trip.

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Nanzaro ordered the Breakfast Sausage Skillet for USD8.29. It came with 2 eggs which Nanzaro opted for sunny side up. Besides the sausage, there were hash potatoes, sweet peppers, mushrooms lining the bottom of the skillet. (more…)

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Sonic America’s Drive-In in Ferndale, WA

We went for another cross border shopping trip just to buy the baby back ribs from Costco in Bellingham for a BBQ gathering. Ben loves the meaty baby back ribs from Costco in US.

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Every time we drove on I5 to Bellingham, Nanzaro always ask to stop at Sonic, America’s Drive-In. He loves the nostalgic idea of eating in a drive-in.

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There are parking stalls for you to park your car, order and eat in your car. Food will be delivered to your car. I saw one of the server was on roller skates while delivering food to cars.

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You can also order from the patio and eat at the patio. We prefer to eat at the tables rather than eating in our car.

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Food and drink will be delivered to your table.

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They even gave us some complementary candies like restaurants do when you pay for your bill.

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Nanzaro ordered the Bacon Cheeseburger Toaster Combo for $6.79. You can add sides with extra charges. Nanzaro asked for jalapeno for a charge of (more…)

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Olive Garden in Bellingham, WA

Off late, I had been suffering from what I call the “fat wallet syndrome”.

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You see, in the span of a week I found out that I have this wear in three of my pants at the same time. I have no idea how long I had been walking around like this. I soon found out that it’s because I carry my fat wallet in my back pocket. I stick all kinds of plastic cards in my wallet that it just got fatter and fatter over time that I did not really notice how fat it was.

I have a habit about my clothing. I had been buying them from the Washington State for the past few years. I just find that it is easier to find one that fit and looks good from the US than those in Vancouver. So Suanne and I took the opportunity over the weekend to drive down to Bellingham to buy new clothings while the boys were engaged in their activities.

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After a round of shopping, we decided to stop by the Olive Garden for lunch. We had always seen their commercials on US TV channels and thought we should check it out. We went to the one on Meridian St.

Olive Garden is an American chain restaurant specializing in Italian food, particularly styled after the region of Tuscany.

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Olive Garden does quite a good job styling their restaurant like old rustic Italian setting. Behind it all it’s really another American chain restaurant. Even the dining rooms were arranged in such a way that it’s separate dining rooms with different themes in each room.

I really like their chairs … with rollers. That to me is good old American efficiency at its best. It’s actually a great idea because I find it very easy to reposition my chair when I want to.

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Service was great and prompt. With the menu being new to us, they were very helpful in getting our drink orders. We ended with a Strawberry Bellini and Frozen Tiramisu. Both drinks were about $6+ each. Suanne liked the Frozen Tiramisu especially which was really rich and creamy.

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The breadstick were quite good. It was served warm, is soft and lightly salted. What I like best is that they were very quick to ask if we wanted more the moment the last piece was taken from the basket. The service is top notch — it was awesome.

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We noticed that one common item on every table is the large bowl of fresh salad. They do make good salad with really fresh vegetables and a “say when” amount of grated cheese. He he he … when the wait staff came by and asked Suanne “say when”, Suanne did not quite hear what he said and replied “yes” … and he went on and on grating cheese into the salad until I realized there was a breakdown of communication and quickly said “stop!”. (more…)

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Seattle: Popeyes Chicken and Biscuits in Burlington

Oh shoot!

I felt so pressured to keep up blogging on this Seattle series. My memory on this trip is somewhat fading. I had been looking at the screen for the past 5 minutes just thinking of what to share. Sigh … and some of you just gotta say you look forward to this series. Pressure, pressure, pressure! LOL!

We left Richmond kind of late … in the late morning. By the time we got over the border, it was already noon. We drove on and decided to make a stop at Burlington for a quick lunch in a fast food joint. We did not care about what it is except that it should be something we do not have in Canada.

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As we drove along the shopping row on S Burlington Blvd looking for a fast food joint we chanced upon the distinctive yellow and red Popeyes Chicken and Biscuits restaurant. Popeyes was one of the places we had on our shortlist of restaurants.

One would have thought that in a place called Popeyes, you would have expected that there will be Popeye (the Sailorman) images all over the restaurant. Nope, there was none at all. Strange.

Anyway, Popeyes is one of the biggest chicken fast food outlets in the US. There is none in Vancouver.

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We ordered the 8 pieces Spicy Chicken. It seems like their flagship product just like the Big Mac is to McD’s. It came with some “biscuits”. I still thinks that biscuits means cookies. At least where I grew up, biscuits IS cookies. These US-style “biscuits” should just be simply called bread, or scones.

Anyway, the biscuits were flaky but too dry for my liking. If only I have hot chocolate, I’ll dunk it in. I took a bite and decided I had enough.

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Despite being called Spicy Chicken, it is quite mild. We like the crispy skin a lot and the fact that it was not all too greasy (more…)

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Arby’s in Bellingham, WA

Oh, did you guys know how long was the border wait last weekend? It was unbelievably long … 3-5 hours south bound. We had been going south for our shopping at least once a month since the Canadian Dollar reached par with the mighty USD. However, we had been somewhat lucky not to be caught up in lineups over 1 hr.

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A couple of months ago, we stopped by Arby’s in Bellingham. Arby’s is struggling in Canada with just a handful of outlets in BC. We like Arby’s and used to go often for their Roast Beef sandwiches when there was an outlet in Richmond. It’s closed a few years ago but we still remember having the sandwiches almost once a week.

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We got the French Dip and Swiss Toasted Sub Combo for $6.85. The combo included some fries and a soft drink.

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We prefer toasted subs. (more…)

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Cascade Pizza in Bellingham, WA

Ever since we had started blogging two years ago, we had never met up with any fellow bloggers. That is not until around the (US) Thanksgiving last year. We had been in contact with Jennifer from Pie Is The New Toast for some time and had agreed to meet up if we are in the Bellingham area. Actually, Jennifer had already blogged on our meet-up here.

Suanne and I went spent a day in the US during Black Friday for shopping. We had been there shopping almost every Black Friday but do find it is somewhat subdued this year. After 10 hours of walking around malls, our feet were killing us.

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The Cascade Pizza is an Italian restaurant located on Meridian Street. If you know where Bellis Fair Mall is, you’ll easily find this place. Bellis Fair is on the intersection of I-5 and Meridian. So, you just drive south bound along Meridian for 1.5 miles after the I-5 intersection.

The Cascade Pizza is one of Jennifer’s favourite restaurant. What we like about this place is that the quality of the food is good and the price really reasonable. It was a great choice of restaurant, Jennifer.

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The Garlic Bread looked absolutely delicious. (more…)

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Horseshoe Cafe in Bellingham, WA

I am so behind in blogging these days. On the next few days I am going to blog on the places we visited about two months ago. Here is one entry from one of our shopping jaunts to Bellingham.

We had not warmed up to the idea to pay for a Nexus pass. It seems to be a lot of money of which we are not sure if we will use it all year round. So, instead, we would normally drive across the border at an unearthly time, before 6AM usually, just to beat the border lineups. We would have breakfast after we cross the border.

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We just randomly picked a breakfast joint along Holly St and went to The Horseshoe Ranch Room Cafe. We had originally wanted to go to The Old Town Cafe which we knew was voted the best breakfast eatery in Whatcom County but they were closed.

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The Ranch Room is just a simple 24-hour eatery. We noticed that we are about the one out-of-towners around. This caters a lot for the locals. We like that because we know such places will serve a really mean breakfast … breakfasts in Vancouver in comparison to the US, is so puny.

I guess there are not a lot of BC shoppers that venture to this part of Bellingham. Most BC shoppers will flock to the east of I-5 where all the big boxes are.

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The coffee in the Ranch Room is not good — (more…)

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Red Mango in Bellevue, WA

After the 12-egg omelette breakfast, we went for a bit of shopping around Bellevue. After all, with the exchange rate between the CAD and USD these days, everything in the US seems like a bargain to us. Before heading back to Vancouver we drove over to the Bellevue Suqare for dessert — Frozen Yogurt in a place called Red Mango.

Red Mango was recommended by Erick who mentioned that this fro-yo chain from South Korea had taken California by storm. The only yogurt we ever had was those Danone yogurt that was sold in small plastic cups at the Real Canadian Superstore.

Locating the Red Mango was a bit of a challenge for us. It was because it was not listed on the Bellevue Square store directory. After walking about for a bit and having asked the info counter did we realize how new this store is. They had only opened just last month.

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This Red Mango outlet is small with just a few small tables. We did notice that most of the customers are Asians. Frankly, I know very little about yogurt and never imagined that a popular yogurt chain would actually originate from east Asia.

Froyo, or frogurt, is a low fat alternative to icre-cream. Red Mango claims that they use only natural ingredients in making their “Authentic” frozen yogurt.

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Ordering this is easy. The menu is really small. You get a choice of two flavours — vanilla or green tea. And then you choose the number of toppings you want. The toppings are fresh fruits or dry stuff like nuts. chocolate, etc.

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We ordered two Red Mango Yougurt to share. The first was the medium sized, original vanilla flavour with three toppings. (more…)

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