Seattle Getaway

We spent the weekend in snowy Seattle(!) in the beautiful Lake Washington neighborhood of Madrona. How did we get away with two teens in tow who only wanted to stay home and do, well, teen-things? We exchanged our home with a wonderful family through the really cool home exchange program called Intervac This was our second exchange--the first time we went to Barcelona for 4 weeks and loved every minute of the adventure. Some people can't understand why we would feel comfortable leaving our home, animals and, in the case of the Barcelona trip, our cars, in the care of strangers. Yes, it's totally a trust thing. Usually house exchangers never meet the people with whom they are swapping houses but we have met both of our exchange families, adding to the fun and intimacy of the experience. We were surprised by the 6 inches of snow that fell on our leafy, hilly walking neighborhood and fell in love with Franz, the cat! To address the teen issue we spent the ENTIRE day at EMP (Experience Music Project) which was built in homage to Seattle's own Jimi Hendrix. There were super cool interactive exhibits on Nirvana and the Seattle grunge scene, the history of the electric guitar, the Avatar movie, and a whole area where you could play and record music on electric instruments in little soundproof booths. We scored big with the kids but we were in heaven too!