Finally Christmas Eve was upon us. We spent the morning on the treadmill, making emergency mince pies to leave for Santa, watching the squirrel eating the burnt ones from yesterday and then making ourselves beautiful for a Christmas lunch at Ray’s.
We arrived at Ray’s at 12:30 and duly stuffed ourselves full of calamari, hummus, burgers, chicken, shrimp sandwiches, cheesecake and cookies. It’s a tough life but we managed to tuck it all away! As we all felt a little on the full side we decided to take a walk along the beach at Golden Gardens – just up the road from Ray’s. After having a quick play in the playground, the walk turned into a wildlife extravaganza!
First there was this rare sighting on the beach – lesser spotted beach bums or something:
Then as we got further up the beach we heard the sea lions barking away in the Sound before we came across this little fella:
He wasn’t dead, he’d just had a big lunch and was having a rest! He had apparently been there for the last 24 hours or so and the seal rescue people weren’t rescuing him because he was ok. Apparently. Anyway, someone had made a sign warning people to leave him alone and he did start moving closer to the water so I’m sure he was fine.
After the seal, we walked back through the park towards the car. On the way we saw a beaver. Well we didn’t see the beaver but we saw all the signs. First there was his house over the other side of the pond:
Then there was a tree trunk that had had a good old gnawing:
And another one. He’d clearly realized the error of his gnawing on this one – it was going to fall straight on his head. The trunk gnawings here were a lot fresher – I think we’d missed him by moments:
After leaving the beach behind we took Aunty A to see the Fremont Troll. The troll is obviously a very popular place on Christmas Eve – there were lots of people there, including a bit of a troll photo shoot – all very odd:
From that popular Christmas Eve location we set straight off for another – Kerry Park and a view of the Space Needle. The top of the Needle has been repainted from the 50th anniversary orange to green trees. It’s not that easy to see the new design but you can just make out the trees on top:
Although the trees on top probably look great from above I think we prefer the orange top for now – certainly from the ground. After leaving the park and the views of the city it was time to head home – it had been an exhausting afternoon – poor us!
Once home, we started tracking Santa’s progress (he’s two minutes from London as I type this) and got nice and comfy ready to ease our way into the Christmas spirit!
One more sleep to Christmas! Whoo hoo!