And then I stopped blogging for nearly two weeks.

Seattle was… a completely different kind of trip, I guess. Visiting people, as opposed to visiting a place – although we did that, too. I was pretty apprehensive beforehand about how it would work; before this trip, I’d only ever met two online friends before, and in neither case was I staying in their home. Or seeing them for this long. My apprehension was all for nothing, though: online friends really do translate into offline friends perfectly well. I’ve known all of them for years, and they were largely what I expected they would be, and that made it a really easy transition.

For me, anyway. I know it was a little different for Rohan, who had spoken to a couple of these people on skype before, but didn’t really know them the way I do. It’s something of a reversal from early in our relationship, when I was being introduced to all of his friends for the first time. Still, it worked out.

The Space Needle

And instead of coming back to my computer in the evening after dinner, I tended to be talking to people instead. (Which does not mean that Amy and I did not hold conversations on our laptops while in different parts of the house.) It’s unusual for me, that I was so able to cope with that much social interaction without just shutting down; normally, I’m not so resilient.

And no, we did not spend all of our time talking about the online games we all play.

We also did do a fair amount of sightseeing. Seattle is probably not a city I would have visited were it not for having friends, and that would be a shame: I really like Seattle a lot. It’s a very food-focused city, which suits me perfectly. They have farmers markets where you can buy all kinds of amazing fresh produce, for example, and an amazing chocolate factory that is doing some pretty cool stuff with fair trade (and have salted caramels to die for). And then there’s Puget Sound, which is huge, and all the lakes: it’s a very water-focused city, which suits me fine. In other words, it’s the kind of city I could actually see myself living in. It probably helped, however, that we had ten sunny, warm days there – I know full well the weather is not always that nice.

We made these!

We ate some amazing meals at places like Mistral Kitchen, RN74 and Purple. We went wine-tasting (and Rohan even went whisky-tasting). We took a ferry across to Bainbridge Island, and went to the Pacific Science Centre. I finally got to go to a Fluevog store and try all the shoes on in person. Rohan went to PAX Dev, and we all went to PAX itself. We did the Seattle Underground tour, which was fantastic. Some of us went kayaking, toured the chocolate factory, and– well, the list goes on. There were cinnamon rolls. And sadly, I’m already having trouble remembering what we did on all the different days.

In short, I was so busy doing stuff and talking to people that blogging did not happen. Or e-mailing. Or… much of anything online, really. Whoops.

I think Rohan and I were both sad to leave. We had amazing hosts (people we would definitely hang out with on a regular basis if we lived close enough to do so; alas), and between them and the others in our group, there was no shortage of good company. It’s a little strange, really, going back to the kind of trip where Rohan and I see huge amounts of each other, but not necessarily anyone else.

Together at last!

Someone needs to invent teleportation now, please, so that we can do this more often.