Hidden Hikes and City Lights

Last week I escaped to the city to celebrate November birthdays with my daughter and her friends! Well, to be honest, they went to Seattle to celebrate birthdays. My niece and I just crashed some of their plans!

I started my trip with a bestie lunch date at a very cool tapas restaurant in Mill Creek! I love Yelp and use it heavily to plan trips and dates because those things always revolve around food for me. I found this spot based on Yelp reviews and sent it to my friend who was excited to try it with me! We were not disappointed! It was so hard to choose what to eat because they have these cool boards with pre selected selections of tapas or ala carte tapas. I convinced her to do ala carte so we could try dishes we were extra excited about. Which is silly, because I'm always excited about all food! Whatever. Anyways, it also helped us come up with ideas for our NYE spread! Can I just say...spicy bacon wrapped dates. Oh. My. Gosh. I hope you're not sick of hearing about food yet!

From there I headed to my niece's house in Ballard. We stopped at the store to pick up some girls weekend essentials, checked out the Airbnb my daughter and her friends were staying at, sipped margaritas at one of our favorite Mexican joints, Oaxaca, and got tacos to go so we could start binging Netflix in our pj's. Perfect way to end the day! Now it really gets good, though! The next morning she took me on the coolest hike! We saw the Ballard locks, modern dream homes on the water, views of the water from the top of the hike, stairs down to the beach, a massive hill in what I think could've been old military housing and ended at Hatties Hat, an iconic Seattle restaurant, for mimosas and salmon chowder. It was a cold sunny day, perfect for the 8 mile nature hike in the middle of the city! Who knew this awesome adventure existed amidst the bustling city streets! My legs were sore for days but it was so worth it! I love that she has a place to escape into nature right in her own backyard and especially that she shared it with me! Afterwards we shopped around town and met up with her friend for happy hour and dumplings! The best dumplings at the little gem of a restaurant called Little Tin Goods! Then the three of us met up with my daughter and her friends for the birthday dinner! They picked a cool brewery in Phinney Ridge where we laughed, toasted to friendship and ate good food! Afterwards, as my niece and I always do, we stopped into a bar for some karaoke before heading home to continue girls sleepover tv binging and crashing on the couch!

Friday was just as epic! Shorter walk that still ended with mimosas and food. Afternoon couch chillaxin. Drinks, dinner, prefunk with the birthday bunch and then...clubbing. Yes, I'm too old for this! Is it even called clubbing? Lol! I'm sure that showed my age! But I would do it again in a heartbeat! My niece had recommended an amazing venue in Seattle called Supernova! We crammed into a couple Ubers and got our dance on! The music was phenomenal, there was confetti and people in costumes swinging from the ceiling! We were up front as close to the stage as possible like rockstars! I got to see my daughter let loose and get her groove on with her signature smile! A couple blog posts back I was whining about not being with her on her actual birthday and this completely made up for it!

From there I headed to my niece's house in Ballard. We stopped at the store to pick up some girls sleepover essentials, checked out the Airbnb m were staying at, sipped margaritas at one of our favorite Mexican joints, Oaxaca, and got tacos to go so we could start binging Netflix in our pj's. Perfect way to end the day! Now it really gets good, though! The next morning she took me on the coolest hike! We saw the Ballard locks, modern houses on the water, people playing tennis in a park, views of the water from the top of the hike, stairs down to the beach and then a massive hill in what I think could've been old military housing and ended at Hatties Hat, an iconic Seattle restaurant, for mimosas and salmon chowder. It was a cold sunny day, perfect for the 8 mile nature hike in the middle of the city! Who knew this awesome adventure existed amidst the bustling city streets! My legs were sore for days but it was so worth it! I love that she has a place to escape into nature right in her own backyard and especially that she shared it with me! Afterwards we shopped around the town and met up with her friend for happy hour and dumplings! The best dumplings at the little gem of a restaurant called Little Tin Goods! Then the three of us met up with my daughter and her friends for the birthday dinner! They picked a cool brewery in Phinney Ridge where we laughed, toasted to friendship and ate good food! Afterwards, as my niece and I always do, we stopped into a bar for some karaoke before heading home to continue girls sleepover tv binging and crashing on the couch!h!!

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