[ Living In The Fairytale ]

Saturday, January 14, 2006

Yesterday and Today

Yesterday
We were given a "guided tour" of the botany greenhouse in UW by David, the exchange student who's doing research there. It was an amazing experience being able to observe up close plants that I've only been able to see in textbooks, such as the venus flytrap, the pitcher plant...and it was the first time I came to realise that there are many varieties of the flytrap and pitcher plants, and they differ greatly in size and appearance too! As for the rest of the exotic plants I saw, I'll just let the pictures do the talking. =)

Notice the heart-shaped leaves?

Cute cacti

Gigantic Lemons!

Can you guess what that is? (Hint: it comes from Seychelles)

Gargantuan pitcher plants

Miniature venus flytraps

Today
We went to the factory stores at North Bend, which I think is southwest of Seattle. It was a 2 hour ride in total as we had to change from 271 to 209. Along the route of 209 we passed by lots of interesting places, such as the Snoqualmie (man-made)Falls, the Railway House Museum and Snoqualmie City (which had the candy factory). We initially wanted to visit these places before heading for the factory outlet, but the museum was closed, and the Falls and the City were too far away from north bend for us to walk there in the pouring rain.

On 271 enroute to Issaquah

The photographer

Saw some steam trains on the way past Railway Museum

View from inside the Factory Outlet

We went crazy when we saw the factory outlet with its 50 (!!) stores and immediately started shopping without bothering about lunch. Haha. First we saw a "chocolate factory" and being the chocoholic I am, I couldn't resist buying some chocolate back. I bought half a pound of dark and milk chocolate almond bears, which consist of a layer of caramel and 2 layers of whole almond nuts covered with yummy chocolate.

Next we went to the Adidas outlet where I bought a waterproof (it says climaproof) Adidas windbreaker at $16, which is only S$26! The Adidas here is dirt cheap! Haha..We also went into the Nike outlet, which was really large and had nicer jackets but I didn't want to buy too many since Singapore is so hot and I probably won't be wearing jackets that often.

After that we had lunch at Burger King where I ordered the 99 cents cheeseburger, which had a cheesy label:

Satiated =)

Then it was back to more shopping at Gap, where I got a jamie jacket and a camisole for only $9! What a steal! (Even the salesgirl was saying, "Score"!)

Actually the (essential) items that I wanted to buy on this trip were socks, waterproof shoes and a bag. In the end, the only essential item that I got were socks, since the only waterproof shoes they had were boots and again I probably won't wear them in Singapore. Hence I decided to buy better woollen socks that had the soft towel texture:

Well it seems like I bought a lot of stuff, but I just calculated and I only spent $41 (including the chocolate)! Not bad for 6 solid hours of shopping! =)

Freezing cold on the way back..

In The Fairyland On|9:43 PM|