Wednesday; Epic adventure day part 1

Somedays it's the simple things that make me feel the most at home and in my element of being far from home. It's the oddities and the abstract days of unusual adventures that tickle my spirit and make me feel the most adventure sated and happy. 

Wednesday was one of those days.

Wednesday was probably one of the best days of that in my travels ever.

It started with waking up on a brisk Winter morning, doing the little morning routine of food, coffee, shower etc then bundling up into warm clothes and heading out for the usual cold but beautiful walk to the bus. I spent the bus trip reading "Numbers in the Dark", getting completely lost in it, completely content with not knowing at all what I was doing for the day or where I was even going, somehow already happy just in these stories, not yet leaving each moment as it came. I refused to wear my headphones as I hopped off the bus and began to walk; it stops me from talking to people and would remove a lot of my adventures if I had left them in. My feet and hunger took me towards the market place, and a conversation with a stranger lead to a recommendation of a little Russian bakery for my brunch. This is how we discovered the amazing deliciousness of Peroshki!

No caption can explain the deliciousness

Imagine some amazing meat, spice, vegetable and cheese concotion inside an amazing baked bun with spices on top. Then slap yourself because there is no way your imagination could possibly have compared to the glory of the real thing. This is the nom nom nommy bun we took with us (the steam is so good to keep you warm!) to explore the markets further!

In the next hour we met so many amazing people and got lost in the stories of the people at the market place. There is a simplicity to the beauty of true adventures; either they are your experiences that draw you into the moment, or they are in the stories of others. I often find my favourite ones are the little moments I find in the realisation of life being in the details as I hear fragments of someone else's tale. Also it doesn't hurt when those tales come with quirky taste testers... like chocolate pasta!

This is Max. He likes the chocolate pasta and the rosemary garlic linguini and reading with his cat.
He let me try all the flavours.

Max is the reason I ended up with fruit pasta (penne, nice and easy to carry a bundle of in the bottom of my bag) and rosemary garlic linguini (BAD PLAN. It wasn't till a minute after I bought it as I went to try and put it in my handbag that I realised I had bought this packet of delicate, breakable pasta at the start of the day. At the start of a long day where I was probably going to walk a lot. Then possibly go out at night. Excellent idea Lisa.). But I tucked it into my bag anyway and managed to have it sit neatly in one place and not break all day! Insane! Clearly I was meant to have this pasta.

This is Lagaia. She like the sweet peppers and ginger jelly and going for picnics.
She had the best laugh I have heard in a long time and made me laugh and smile a lot too because of her happiness.

So many jellies! I haven't the time to do justice to how much fun I had chatting to these market stall people, but it was lovely just ambling around solo chatting to them and having them all openly give me their stories and flavours and happiness. I had a really warm morning with total strangers.

This is Geneille. She likes to hum while she steams the milk.
She made me a sugar cookie coffee. 

So after a while I decided I required a coffee. Introducing, Geneille; who lived up to my good natured bantering about whether or not the coffee shop was truly capable of producing Seattle's "Best" coffee and even threw in a white chocolate and rhubarb treat for me!

In the little side street I was suddenly cast back to France with the weather of Denmark.
It's like my travels are all merging together!
Merging together with delicious delicious coffee...

This is the shop where we also met a small dog that seemed to somehow be a regular there. He poked his nose in then trotted over to the counter, sat behind the line and waited patiently. I sat quietly watching him with curiosity and saw Geneille spin around and suddenly see him, grin and flick her hand to invite him over. So he quickly hops up, tail wagging and runs to her (tail now wagging furiously) and she pulls a tin down from between two coffee tins, opens it and pulls out a dog biscuit for him! Ha, twas adorable. His owner seemed to be a regular there, the smiles between them all had a sense of warmth and familiarity, it was lovely to just sit and watch. And then suddenly we meet Alan; the sausage man! Alan was the man who began to dance while waiting for his coffee and tried to bait Geneille into dancing, then went looking for straws loudly declaring there were no red ones to be found and that this was a comical disgrace. I grinned and pointed to a stack and told him they were there, they were just wrapped (Like a Christmas present for you Alan!) He laughed at that line and we chatted for a while. He promised me a polka dance if I came and found his market stall; he was Alan the sausage man. I nodded. Of course I did, as though I would pass up another odd invitation!

So after my coffee I began to wander, looking for this market stall and ended up in a little card shop. See I have this thing about finding a little canvas, print or card of the places I visit every time I travel. My favourite is the little painting of Marseille that I found in the markets just as they were closing up and the lady seemed disappointed that she wouldn't be able to sell the one she just did because it was so late in the day. I told her it was beautiful though and I was sure she'd be able to sell that the next day without any problem. She was so happy she sold it to me instead for half price. It sits next to my bed now. But anyhow, I found some little cards of ink drawings of the Seattle Markets for my America trip! Yay! As I wandered on, I simply could NOT find this sausage shop and instead ended up in some inside lane of other odd shops I'd never seen. This is how I ended up in Tenzing and Momo's; an odd little apothecary.

Full of bottled mysteries and powered magic!

Which is where, just as I was leaving, I caught the eye of a young man, a little taller than me, blonde, standing leaning over a desk with his grey peacoat bunching up onto the old wooden drawers, excitedly pulling off his gloves and chatting to the owner about some sort of new concoction in the shop. I laughed a little at the sight of his enthusiasm in a warm way, I was merely enjoying observing someone at home in the market place as I had been all morning, when he looked up surprised, grinned at me and then I was already out the shop. I didn't give it a second thought as I found an even odder shop full of wind up toys till I was leaving the alley way again and suddenly heard a voice behind me;

"You were sure standing outside waiting for a long time" 

I spun around to see the same grin and flashing blue green eyes walking casually right behind me.

"Don't flatter yourself, I was playing with the toys next door!"

"There are toys next door?!"

His grin fell away and his eyes were now shining with intrigue and surprise. I laughed and immediately turned on my heel, leading us back into the alley way again.

"Come on. Now we have to go. You can't leave without seeing these toys."

Such an array of awesome wind ups!

And that is how we met J. And thus began my day of mystery market place adventuring with him at my side.

The rest of the day till the sun began to go down was spent laughing, exploring, traversing the many many intertwining inside and outside alleys of the markets, swapping stories and playing games. J has the mind of an engineer with the heart of an inventor and the playful curiosity and adventurous spirit of one of the lost boys. I have never had a better market explorer partner in crime on any of my adventures. As the day was slipping to evening we were rapidly approaching his last bus, so agreed to get a coffee and walk to the stop. This is how we arrive at the story of the coffee!

Razor Blades; the coffee that sounds bad but was actually awesome and was invented for Lisa
So standing in line at Starbucks J asks me if we have Starbucks in Australia...

"Yeah we have Starbucks, but I don't think we have all these Christmas flavours like you do since it's summer for us. I've been trying them all while I'm here, they're amazing!"

"Have you tried them all now?"

"Nope, there's still around 4 I haven't gotten to drink yet."

-Move up queue-

"You should just ask for all of them. In one drink. :D"

"Ooooo yes! Though I don't think they'd do that..."

-Move up queue to very near counter-

"Just ask for it in that accent of yours and then act all confused and Australian. They'd be sure to give it to you!"

"Shhhh you're giving away my game plan! Now it'll never work!"

-Guy behind the counter laughs and says-

"No that would totally work, I love accents. I've actually been trying to practice different accents, I'd love to have a British one, but the Aussie accent is really hard."

"Oh now you have to show me!"

"Okay okay I can say one thing. *Practices behind his hand* Okay, I'm going to say "Razor Blades"'

-Our faces drop and look a tad perplexed-

"It's all I know how to say!"

"Okay! Go go go go!"

-Clears throat-

"Ray-zorrr Blades."

:)

*Endless applause from us* (It was actually the best I've heard so far!)

So after giving him some pointers to make it even more accurate...

"So, since I helped you out with your accent, will you make me this weird Christmas drink?"

"I will make you up your very own one with Christmas flavours."

"Ohhhh yay! *Claps excitedly* thank you so much! What do you call it?"

"Razor Blades."

And then J saw it and ordered one too! So back out into the cold, with slight rain, we began to drink our odd coffee concoction and walk to the bus guessing flavours. Cinammon... pumpkin spice... chai? ...mocha! ...no that's creme brulee... can you taste vanilla? Maybe that's eggnog! Oooo it's gingerbread too! As we stood under the awning, waiting for the bus in the dimming light laughing, he told me about his film work and people watching, I told him a story I made up about the man standing on the other side of the street and about Calvino. He didn't know who he was, so on a whim I pulled out my second hand book, paused, then handed it to him with a smile. A sign of trust, I would lend him my book for the bus trip. As we swapped the coffees around between our hands to pull books out and put them in other bags, we ended up getting confused about whose was whose and decided to have fun by writing each other a note on the other persons coffee cup. So at 5pm in the rain at the bus stop we each wrote three simple truths about ourselves, smiled, hugged, put him on a bus, waved and then went our separate ways. I walked down the road smiling reading J's truths on my coffee cup when I bumped into a man who had his back turned to me. I looked up to apologise... and that's how I met Ky.

~Continued in part two of Wednesday; epic adventure day~