So I decided to break this up into 3 smaller posts because I always take a million pictures and have a bunch that I wanted to share from my family’s recent trip out to the West Coast! We haven’t been on a vacation as a whole family in a while and Sohum really wanted to visit somewhere before he went back to UVA. We had planned for LA and then switched it up to Seattle at the last minute! Normally, I’m the one that’s in charge of planning our family trips but I was crazy busy with finishing up the new website & getting ready to second shoot a wedding the day before we were going to fly out. It was quite a hectic schedule! So everything on this trip was new and fresh to me since I hadn’t really researched any of the places we had on our lengthy and thorough itinerary. I DID know that I wanted to meet up with two super dear friends of mine out in Seattle and despite all of our running around, I actually got to meet up with them both! And in true Manali fashion, I forgot to take a picture with them hahahah I need to work on that…But, for now here’s all the pictures I DID manage to take while in Seattle & Bellevue on our first day on the west coast! These all were taken within a span of 8 hours so it goes to show how much we tried to cover!

Our cousin, Yash, who lives in Bellevue did us the honor of driving us down to Golden Garden Beach! We roamed around for a little while and I even dipped my toes in the (cold) water but mainly we just ogled at cute puppers walking by. Then we drove up to the very top to Kerry Park which had a super dope view of the Seattle skyline!

^ Admiring cars as always 😉

Next we headed over to the famous Pike’s Place Market. We got there around 6 right as a lot of vendors were closing shop but it was still pretty bustling! We walked by the original Starbucks but were not hardcore enough to wait in the line that wrapped out onto the sidewalk hahaha

The Gum Wall is right by Pike’s Place and I had seen it in pictures before but hadn’t realized that it was an ENTIRE alley completely filled with bubble gum, it was CRAZY!!!! You could kinda smell the bubble gum scent as you walked through it! We saw a bunch of business cards so I made my mark and then we went on our way 🙂

My friend, Apoorva, walked us to Chihuly Gardens and she mentioned that out of all the attractions there were to see in Seattle, this was definitely one of the coolest ones. And as soon as we stepped into the exhibit you could see why. I’m not even going to try and describe it, I hope the pictures do it some justice

This glasshouse area was definitely my favorite!!!

Hahahaha thank you Sohum for literally laying on the ground at the exhibit in an attempt to get a shot of me with the artwork & Space Needle 😀

We ended the night at the Space Needle right around dusk which offered some AMAZINGG views!

That’s all for part one, will be back with part two of our quick day journey over to Victoria, B.C. for the next post!

Read Part Two – Victoria, B.C orrrr Part Three – Mt. Rainier & Crater Lake