Last weekend, I took one of the Seattle ferries to Bainbridge to spend the night in Poulsbo. I didn’t spend much time exploring Poulsbo itself (I have in the past and hopefully will again soon) but it’s a really cute city branded as the “Viking City” – complete with murals, an annual Viking festival, and the adorable Scandinavian bakery, Sluy’s.
It’s definitely worth a visit if you’re in the area (or coming back from the Olympic Peninsula) and hopefully I’ll do post shortly on the many different islands surrounding Seattle, though I’ve only been to a few.
The ferry ride is always lovely though (only a short 30 minutes and $8.50 round trip – paid on the trip from Seattle and free returning) and a great opportunity to snap some photos of the Seattle skyline and the Olympics (the mountain range on the Olympic Peninsula) – particularly on a clear day!
Here is a bit of a rundown on the Seattle city skyline.
When I got back in to Seattle the next morning, I spent a little time wandering around the International District (Seattle’s Asian inclusive “Chinatown”) to visit Uwajimaya and grab some treats.
Uwajimaya is an excellent and huge Asian supermarket chain in Washington and Oregon. Anything I need for cooking any Japanese or Hawaii dishes I can usually find there and recently I realized they sell Zippy’s Portuguese Bean Soup, which is dangerous thing to learn for my wallet. If only they sold frozen Liliha Bakery Coco Puffs, they’d be perfect! There’s a significant health/beauty section, cookware, food court, and attached bookstore – though the majority of the store is taken up by groceries. The bookstore is great though and always my go-to for stationary and cute gifts (especially if I need something Totoro themed).
The grocery store also always has a lot of unusual kitkat flavors – even beyond the usual Japanese flavors of matcha and strawberry. On this trip, I picked up Ikinari Dango and Hojicha. The hojicha (my favorite type of green tea) flavor actually didn’t have me totally sold but I really liked the Ikinari Dango – which is apparently a mochi from Kumamoto with azuki (red) beans and sweet potato, yum! I could definitely taste both the azuki and the sweet potato and they really worked in the kitkat.
My favorite place to get bubble tea in the International District is Young Tea. I love Young Tea because you can specify the level of sweetness and ice you want (just like my favorite Hawaii bubble tea shop, Taste Tea) and they have a great selection of teas and add-ons. I almost always get the Rose Black Milk Tea, 30% sweet, less ice – often with grass jelly as my topping, though I’m still trying to perfect the best topping combo for that tea.
This time, I tried a different shop, 85°C Bakery Cafe. I got the pudding milk tea and two pastries, an anpan and a milk tea bun. I wasn’t totally sold on the pudding milk tea (I was hoping maybe for more pudding consistency but I think it was pudding in flavor and too sweet for me) but the pastries were good and I’ll definitely go back! The anpan was more fluffy that I’m used to with a light amount of an (red bean paste) but very tasty and the milk tea bun was really interesting. It had two fillings – a milk tea flavored custard and a thinner layer on the bottom that was boba flavored with almost a mochi-like consistency.
Anpan (top), Milk Tea Bun (bottom) 
Pudding Milk Tea 
Milk Tea Bun
Overall, the trip made for a fun weekend and I got the ingredients that I needed to make miso eggplant and kabocha went I got home – hopefully two dishes I’ll get around to posting recipes for!
Fun-sized: A Travel and Life Blog 