All in a Sunday

Often Sunday lunch is a meal at a chain restaurant or a potluck and once in a while, now that my parents are nearby, a family affair. Yesterday a few friends and I crossed the 520 bridge to find a new place: Volunteer Park Cafe."Find" I mean literally...after a series of turns the wrong direction down the wrong streets we finally happened upon this little cafe in the corner of a lovely little neighborhood in the Madison Park meets Capitol Hill area. [Note to self: when asking your Blackberry for directions, it is necessary to specify whether the street goes east or west or down a hill or up or this way or that. Ahem.] If you've been to Volunteer Park, this cafe is sort of tucked away in the southeast corner, but it's a couple blocks from the actual park entrance. Anyway...it's a Sunday brunch kind of place, where young families or groups of friends wander in after sleeping all morning to read the paper or a new magazine and have a breakfast panini with a Stumptown cappuccino or perhaps a morning strata with the brew of the day. Volunteer Park also serves salads and sandwiches along with the brunch fare. Members of my group had a brie & apple panini with cup of coffee, the "big boy" panini with root beer (big boy meaning 3 kinds of meat and a few veggies), and the chicken potpie with, again, root beer. They proclaimed the root beer good. I had the strata and a side salad. The strata was shaped in the form of a jumbo muffin cup: yummy layers of bread, egg, thick bacon, and veggies. The side salad had a light but tasty vinaigrette, somewhat sweet and somewhat sour. There is a long communal table in the middle of the room with booths and tables and chairs along the walls. For a minute we weren't sure we were going to find seats, but then a table near the window opened up just as our food was ready. While sitting facing the window I spied with my little eye a bungalow for sale across the street...hmmm....[accepting donations]

Leaving the little neighborhood us girls drove through Volunteer Park with plans to return on a nice day to take photos of Seattle through the "donut hole" and climb the water tower stairs...on to Cap Hill to grab some sweet treats at Cupcake Royale's latest digs at 1111 11th Avenue. Babycakes are truly a fabulous invention: you can try multiple seasonal flavors--Cranberry Orange and Pumpkin Maple--on the same day!

Later in the day I realized I had an Anthropologie birthday coupon burning a hole in my bag so I made tracks to the Shops at the Bravern. The Bravern has been open for about two months and is a collection of high end designer shops. While my status in life does not warrant more than window shopping for the most part, The Bravern contains an Anthropologie, Sur La Table, and Trophy Cupcake, and so I expect I shall pay it a visit from time to time. I nearly lost track of time while wandering through Anthropologie oohing and aahing and wishing but managed to find myself a scarf to complete an outfit. A scarf you ask? that's all? Well, those bungalows aren't free, you know!