Downtown living

As far as I'm concerned, big cities are terrifying. Alien planets, foreign soil; too many people in too little space, too much misery and crime in the bad sections and too much money and high fashion in the good ones. Growing up we made a general progress from suburb to small town to middle-of-nowhere and I loved it. Soooo, now we're smack dab in the middle of downtown Seattle for a few weeks and I'm resolved to enjoy the experience instead of just surviving.

Pre-move thinking went something like this: Lots of people enjoy living in the downtown areas of big cities, gotta be worth a try, maybe we'll really like it! It was a sound theory, with several promising points. For one thing, Jonathan's commute is only about 10 minutes of walking, and there's a good bus system for Sam and mommy to use when exploring the city.

But my first impression, after a long day of travel and stress, was less than positive. Mentally and physically exhausted, I puttered around our new apartment home, frustrated at what felt like every turn. Why would anyone choose to live like this?! How do people raise children in this building?!

After a night of sleep though, I had to recant my ill-tempered musings. For one thing, this is the view I get with my morning coffee:

On the other side of the table, Jonathan also approves of his view:

It's not like I can fault Amazon's relocation arrangements--it's a fairly new, generously-sized two bedroom apartment--as much as I complain, we're not exactly (nowhere near!) slumming it here.

So, on our first morning in Seattle, fortified by sleep and a little relaxation, we started our first weekend of bravely facing big city culture shock!

I'm totally lying; we turned tail and ran for the suburbs. In our defense, we needed to stock our new apartment with a bunch of odds and ends, which required the car's hauling capacity and big box stores like Target and Ikea with plenty of parking. But yeah, other than walking the dogs I didn't venture outside my comfort zone much for the first couple of days.

Now that we've had a few days though, we're finding plenty of other good things about our temporary abode. Jonathan is enjoying his walks to and from the office (not to mention the new job!), and after a couple of nights Sam adjusted wonderfully to his new sleeping arrangements. St. James Cathedral isn't too far, and mass on Sunday was beautiful. I took Sam to the Children's Museum yesterday, and he had a blast--we'll be going back for more! (and posting pictures)

The weather our first few days here has been a dream--highs in the mid-70s or high 60s, with the autumn chill and color changes just starting up. We've only had one and a half cloudy days so far, but those were almost better than the sunny ones! (This is the only area where I feel sympathy with vampires--full sun is highly overrated. But ask me again after a few years up here and we'll see if that holds)

On the whole, we're still putting a lot of effort into finding a good rental house out in the scenic suburbs, but I'm glad we have this opportunity to experience Seattle up close and personal.