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Tags: Beer Travel / Beer Festivals / Festivals / Events / Drinking Travel / Seattle Travel / → All Tags

A Pumpkin Beer Festival In Seattle To Start The Halloween Season

Pumpkin season is upon us. Most places are now filled with orange displays, the convenience store is pushing their pumpkin cappuccino things, and of course there’s plenty of candy. We’re all about celebrating Halloween even if it is still an entire month until the big day, especially if it involves some special holiday beverages. One brewery in Seattle knows that there’s only one way to truly get the season underway, and that is with a pumpkin beer festival.

The Elysian Brewing Company is putting the final preparations in place for The Great Pumpkin Beer Festival. Things will be taking place this weekend, October 10 and 11, at the brewery’s Capitol Hill location. There will be plenty of pumpkin beers to help lager lovers get their fix and celebrate the season. The brewery will be honoring nine of their own beers, including The Great Pumpkin Imperial Pumpkin Ale, Hansel and Gretel Ginger Pumpkin Pilsner, and Night Owl. There will be concoctions from other breweries as well including Southern Tier, Rock Bottom, and Dogfish Head.

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Tags: Movie Set Travel / Seattle Travel / Jennifer Aniston / → All Tags

Love Happens in Seattle, If You Believe Jennifer Aniston

Get out your tissues ladies. Love Happens, a new romantic dramedy starring Jennifer Aniston and Aaron Eckhart, opens in theaters today. The movie isn't getting the best reviews from critics but we give its setting, Seattle, four stars.

Where to Stay:
In the beginning of the movie, Aaron Eckhart walks from Pike Place to the Hyatt Regency, in the rain of course. But the Hyatt in the movie is actually in Vancouver, where most of the movie was made. Seattle does have their own Hyatt though, the Grand Hyatt, located downtown at 721 Pine St. Keeping with the Love Happens theme, the Grand Hyatt Seattle offers an Amour Package that includes accommodations, in-room breakfast for two, champagne, chocolates, bath salts and a 3 pm check out. And just like in life, all of that love comes at a price, the package starts around $385 a night.

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Tags: Labor Day Travel / Festivals / Summer Festivals / Events / Seattle Travel / → All Tags

Seattle Has An Everything Under The Umbrella Festival For Labor Day

If hot air balloons and chuck wagons aren’t in your plans for Labor Day, there’s still plenty of other ideas for you to waste away your holiday weekend.

One of the best festivals of the year is Bumbershoot 2009, and it’s conveniently taking place at Seattle Center from September 5-7. Film, theatre, arts, and of course music, will all be yours to enjoy. So grab a triple venti something or other and hit the festival running.

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Tags: Strange Scuba Spots / Scuba / Scuba Dives / Active Travel / Seattle Travel / → All Tags

The One Seattle Place Where Starbucks Doesn't Rule: Underwater

Water—especially rain—is one of the first things that comes to mind when you think of Seattle. Despite all this water, underwater activiies are not exactly as synonymous with Seattle. That’s slowly changing thanks to a local Scuba club and their shore dive adventures into Puget Sound.

The Scuba Schools Group has a location in Seattle, and they’d be happy to have you join them in one of their club dives. Don’t worry though, there’s no secret handshake or membership dues at this club, just a bunch of people enjoying the underwater universe. Best of all, the club dives are free, so just bring your gear and get going. Just make sure you have some experience doing cold water dives, because even though its summer, the water is a little chilly.

On August 29, the dive crew will be hitting up the Alki Junkpile. It’s kind of an artificial reef, Seattle-style, where they’ve seen some “cute” grunt sculpin on recent dives. If you can’t make it to that dive, there’s also one planned off the Keystone Jetty on September 27. You’ll be burning through your digital camera battery as you snap off pictures of rockfish and other critters. There’ll be a cookout after the dive, so be a pal and bring something to throw on the grill.

Related Stories:
· Seattle Scuba Shore Diving [Official Site]
· Say Mazel Tov To Underwater Weddings [Jaunted]
· Scuba coverage [Jaunted]

[Photo: Dan Hershman]

Tags: Beer Festivals / Beer Travel / Beer / Events / Seattle / → All Tags

Seattle's Beer Festival Welcomes Drinkers and Their Dogs

Seattle is famous for their weather and their coffee, but they've slowly been making their way onto the beer scene as well. After all, they aren't too far away from Portland, a city that has more breweries than anywhere else in the country. To celebrate this new beer fame, they’re welcoming one and all to the Seattle International Beer Festival.

On July 3-5, hop heads and beer bellies from around the country will gather at the Seattle Center Mural Amphitheatre to test out the latest and greatest from the world of beer. There will be over 150 varieties on tap and in bottles just waiting for you to sample them. We just hope there aren’t too many coffee-flavored porters hanging around, because those are less than tasty.

Tickets are $20, a price that includes admission, tasting glass, live music and ten beer tickets. Unfortunately unlimited samples aren’t available here, so you’ll need to buy more tickets for $1 each if you’re still thirsty. Also, depending on the “swank factor”—their words not ours—your sample can cost between one and four tickets. For those early risers, there’s a Happy Hour between noon and 1:00 pm where you’ll get five extra beer tickets.

Once you’ve paid for your ticket, you are welcome to visit all three days of the festival; there’s no re-entry fees. So feel free to bring your dog the next day—they’re welcome inside— so you have someone to gripe to about your hangover.

Related Stories:
· Seattle International Beerfest [Official Site]
· Trips We Love: The Year in Beer [Jaunted]
· Beer coverage [Jaunted]

[Photo: Official Site]

Tags: Twilight Travel / Celeb Travel / Cruising With Celebs / Cruises / → All Tags

Vampires Versus Pirates: "Twilight" Cruise Sets Sail In 2010

Leave your garlic at home: fans of Stephenie Meyer's Twilight series and the subsequent movies take to the high seas next year when the first Twilight Cruise and Convention at Sea sets sail in August 2010.

Offered by a new company called Cruises Cruises Cruises, the Seattle-to-Juneau trip August 8-15 already has two Cullen RSVPs—Alice and Emmett (uh, Kellan Lutz and Ashley Greene to you). On-board activities include movie viewings as the sequel "New Moon" should be out on DVD by then, a costume ball and trivia contests. Is it too much to hope for vampire baseball too?

"Twihards" with extra time can opt in on a 4-day bus tour beforehand that will take them to Forks and La Push, Washington, which both feature prominently in Twilight and were used as sets for the first movie before production. But start saving your allowance now: cabins on the cruise start at $1049 for a double, with the bus tour at $449.

For a moment we thought vampires actually couldn't get wet, but wait, that's witches. Still, how will a night-dwelling people protect their sparkly skin on the high seas? Pack your SPF 5,000!

Related Stories:
· Twilight fans get chance to cruise with vampire film stars [Guardian.co.uk]
· Alaska Twilight Cruise and Convention at Sea [Twilight Fans Cruise]
· Twilight coverage [Jaunted]

[Still from "Twilight" of Edward Cullen and some chick: SIlive.com]

Tags: Dunkin' Donuts Alternatives / Donuts / Dessert / Food Travel / National Doughnut Day / → All Tags

Seattle's Healthy Donuts: Shouldn't Work But It Does

In general, we take a firm stand against any attempts to make foods like donuts healthy. They're donuts – sugar-topped balls of fried flour – they're by definition unhealthy, and should stay that way.

But we do make an exception for one place – Mighty-O Donuts in Seattle, which manages to turn out a product that is vegan, organic, trans fat-free, cholesterol-free, has no artificial flavors or chemicals, yet is somehow delicious. Seriously, we don't know how they do it.

Admittedly, these treats won't be featured at your local health food store anytime soon – they are, after all, still sugar-topped balls of fried flour – but with innovative flavors like Coffee Bomb, Banana Bread and French Toast – a cinnamon, ginger and orange spiced maple syrup donut (sans eggs of course) – your mouth will never even know these are a healthier kind of donut.

Plus: free food alert! Mighty-O will be handing out free mini-donuts all day this Friday, June 5 in honor of National Doughnut Day (what, you didn't know?)

Related Stories:
· Mighty-O Donuts [Official Site]
· Get Dat Donut [Jaunted]
· Do-Nuts So Old School, They Won't Drop the Hyphen [Jaunted]

[Photo: bibliogrump]