Seattle with kids

The whirlwind zoo tour on an empty stomach

On Saturday I just couldn’t take the messy house anymore, and so I called a zoo day. I opened the door of my big boss office and in a tone to make Michael Scott proud, I declared, “It’s a zoo day, people!  It’s a zoo day!” And since I knew the zoo probably closed unreasonably early,  I tried to hustle everyone out the door as quickly as possible.

We got to the zoo at 3 pm.

The Woodland Park Zoo closes at 4 pm.

(Well, okay, fine, technically the indoor exhibits close at 4, and the whole zoo closes at 5.)  Fine.  We had two hours to cram in some serious animal watching.

And cram it in we did.

I wanted Charming to see as much as possible, since it was his first time to the zoo here and this zoo holds a place in my heart as the zoo of my youth.  So we took turns pulling the wagon or carrying one of our countless children and I set the pace by rushing from exhibit to exhibit.  Can’t see an animal in here?  Probably died.  Movin’ on!  The children who were not riding in the wagon often enough did not move their little feet fast enough.

And in spite of the rushedness we caught some really good animal moments because when it got close to 5:00 most of the animals started becoming more active. I guess they knew it would be time to go in soon, and get some grub, or something.  Some of the people got more active around that time too, but I opted against photgraphing the make-out couple and chose instead to take a picture of the lovey dovey lions.  It was such a precious animal moment.  The lions were looking towards what I assumed was the food door, and the female just nuzzled her head under the chin of her mate.   Sooo sweet.  And the fancy pants photographer man had already left, and HE missed it.

It was great weather.  It started to get a little chilly around five, but all before then it was the perfect temperature.  And the only unpleasantness in the air was the sound of Sugar and Engineer moaning about how hungry they were.  I would have brought more snacks, I pointed out to Charming, but we didn’t have any in the house.  Trust me, I would have, since I was plenty hungry myself.  Of course the children were hungriest at exactly 3:57 pm, when we were more than a 3 minute walk from any of the soon to be closed food vendors.  Saves me the cost of overpriced zoo fod, I reasoned.

So we left just after five with the promise of stopping at a restaurant for dinner.  I am not super familiar with the “Seattle” part of the Seattle area so I didn’t really know where I could find any restaurants.  I remembered enough from my youth, that I decided to take a gamble and drive down Greenlake Way.  I saw Spuds.  I am familiar with Spuds.  We eat there, I mumbled caveman-like.  Or was it my stomach that said it…

But the house-not-sold-yet cheapskates that we are, Charming and I decided we couldn’t stop just yet because we didn’t want to pay for parking.  The children who were already screaming with hunger wailed even harder after we drove away from the small set of “restaurants” that we had just discovered.

And after we drove around for an eternity we ended up at a pay parking next to Spuds.  I got out of the car, paid for the parking and then Charming noticed that the pay parking lot at Spuds is free, if you are eating at Spuds.

The insanity.

So, we eat at Spuds.  Not the best experience ever. Charming and I split a “double order” which means double fish and double fries.  There is no way they gave us a double order of fries and as Charming resolved to complain his way into more fries, I convinced him that less of the overdone, flavorless fries was probably better.

Not impressed with Greenlake Spuds.  As a kid the Juanita Spuds was great.  This Spuds stunk. The place was filthy, the only indoor tables were two seaters, and everything but the fish tasted second rate.  They want you to pay for ketchup and tartar, refills are not free (or even cheap) and they add a fifty cent charge to all orders under $5 if you use a credit card.  And these little nickel and dimes are the straw that breaks the camel’s back for me.   Because in my opinion, if your establishment is bringing in so little profits that you feel you cannot provide free ketchup and suck up the cost of the credit card fee, than the answer is not to pass on extra charges to your customers.  The answer is… dunh, dunh, duh….

Up the quality of your establishment.  Clean it up!  Make better food!  Provide better service!  I totally believe in supporting small businesses (I have one myself) but I don’t think that we should frequent a venue just for the sake of it being a small business if they do not have a quality product.  It’s like people saying they feel like they should shop at the local grocer even though they feel kind of “gross” when they go in there.  Don’t go if it’s gross!  There is no reason a store owner can’t make their small business just as good as a chain store.  In fact, it should be better, either with its quaintness or attention to detail or its stellar customer service and products!

Huff!

Well, enough of my ranting and raving.  In conclusion: Woodland Park Zoo: A+.  Greenlake Spuds: F-.