This was the second day of the Northwest Folklife Festival (although the first day for us).

We woke up around 8am and got in gear around 9am. Quite a record for us.

Outside the hotel we found it was kind of chilly. Ginny assured me that it would get warmer soon enough.

We wandered over to the Seattle Center only to find that Folk Life didn’t start until 11am.

Oh well, we had some time to kill. Asked a few of the vendors if they were serving coffee yet, but none were.

We people watched for a while and one of the vendors actually tracked us down and asked if we still wanted coffee, because she was starting a pot. SOLD!

After folk life actually started up, we checked out some of the acts. We watched the Morris Dancers a bit, checked out some of the crafts vendors,

The weather got a bit warm, almost hot, and both Ginny and I were beginning to feel it. We decided to take a short siesta and come back later in the afternoon.

After a short nap we went back. Saw some more acts. We made a point to stop at the Northwest Court stage to listen to the sea shanties. As an added bonus, they were next to the beer garden, so both Ginny and I had a drink.

We listened to the Celtic music, which was pretty darn good. Some of the audience members started dancing. Two of the dancers stood out… there was a young girl, probably 13 or so, who was obviously a trained ballet dancer. She was quite good. The other person who stood out was this guy who obviously loved the music and was dancing a rather good Irish jig.

Around 7pm we decided to head back to the hotel. Kind of early, but we were both tired.

Along the way back, we passed by McMenamins on Roy street. When we looked in the window, we saw three or four musicians from Folk Life sitting in the corner booth playing their instruments. I looked at Ginny and asked “Time for one beer? She readily agreed.

We went in, grabbed some seats at the bar, and had some really tasty beer and listen to the musicians. It was fantastic. Ended up having four beers (barman kept asking us if we wanted to start a tab, but we always responded “No, this is the last one . It became a bit of a joke between us.

By the time we left there were about 50 musicians in the bar, all playing and singing. It was incredible.

Flew out to Seattle from Chicago. Nothing really special. Ginny ran late, so the cab had to wait a few minutes.

Unfortunately, in the rush to get into the cab, I forgot my long sleeve jacket.

Flight was kind of bumpy, but nothing extraordinary. I tried to snooze a bit, as we were going to arrive late.

We arrived, picked up the luggage, and went to collect the car. Since we had originally rented a trailblazer, which was bigger than I wanted to deal with, Ginny had downgraded us to a RAV4. I wanted something that had real 4 wheel drive and six cylinders (since we were driving in the mountains), so we re-upgraded to a ford explorer. This explorer, however, was bigger than any explorer that I remembered. Ginny and I figured that they had upsized the explorer since the last time we rented one.

We got to the hotel around 11pm (thanks to Fred) and checked in. Had some trouble finding a parking place at the hotel due to the size of the Explorer. Desk clerk gave us permission to park in a handicapped spot.