Top Gun Seafood Restaurant

Top Gun Seafood Restaurant is a Chinese Dim Sum restaurant located in Bellevue Washington. It is a very popular restaurant and there is usually a long line of people waiting at the entrance. We drove from Portland to Top Gun Seafood Restaurant on a Saturday and took us about 3 hours to get there. When we got there, the parking lot was already full. What we meant by full is that although there is still a lot of empty parking spaces in the plaza, most of them have been marked to be reserved for other businesses in the plaza. Thus we had to park our car across the street to avoid the car being tolled.


We walked into the restaurant and took the number to wait in line. We estimated that we had to wait for at least 30 minutes to an hour. Luckily, the restaurant has 2 separate seating areas and the second seating area was still closed. After we waited for about 10 minutes, the restaurant opened the second seating area for everyone who were waiting in line, including us!

After we sat down, we ordered Jasmin Tea. The tea came with a nice looking tea pot, but it could not hold much tea in there. We waited for about 5 minutes before the cart started to come by and we started to order the food. We ordered the usual Pearl Chicken, Shrimp Dumpling, Pastries, and Egg Tart.

The pastry dessert was a bit too sweet. The bottom of the pastry was all covered in brown sugar glaze. The egg tart was a bit too small, and not enough taste to it. Pearl Chicken is the only dish that we actually liked because there wasn't any small shrimp in it. The chicken feet wasn't bad either.

Overall, Top Gun Seafood Restaurant is rated with 4.5 stars on Google, which we think the rating is way too high. We would only give Top Gun Seafood Restaurant a rating of 3 stars due to the taste of food, the service attitude, and the cleanness of the place. In addition, parking was just so difficult. If you plan to go there, make sure you go there early!

Wallowa Lake Vacation

Wallowa Lake is located at North Eastern corner of Oregon state and it is known to be little Switzerland in Oregon. It is located right by the town of Joseph and it is about 6 hours of drive time from Portland. Wallowa Lake is also one of the seven wonders in Oregon and its surrounding mountains provide a lot of amazing hiking trails for people who love to hike.


We decided to go for a 4 day vacation at Wallowa Lake during the Labour Day weekend. We left Portland very early at 7AM in the morning and headed East of I84 towards Wallowa Lake. The drive on I84 was smooth along the Columbia Gorge. The scenario was just amazing. Once we arrived at La Grande, we took a rest and had lunch there. We have never been to the Eastern part of Oregon before, thus every thing seem to be very new to us!

We arrived at Wallowa Lake around 2PM in the afternoon and this time we are staying at Wallowa Lake Lodge located at the South side of the lake. Wallowa Lake Lodge is right by the lake and very convenient. The lodge did not offer any air conditioning, but it was not needed. The electric fan was good enough. There was also a lot of deers roaming around the lodge and we have never seen such a big horde of deers before.

On the first day, we just walked around the lake and had a good rest. At night, we went out for star gazing. Wallowa Lake was a perfect place for star gazing due to extremely low light pollution.

On the second day, we woke up extremely early to do a hike at Ice Lake. The hike to Ice Lake was extremely long but well worth it! The lake was beautiful and the trail to the lake was just simply amazing! After we came back from hiking, we had a wonderful dinner at the restaurant at Wallowa Lake Lodge.

On the third day, we went for brunch at Old Town Cafe. The food was amazing there! Afterwards, we went to buy few drinks at Arrowhead Chocolate Coffee & Tea. The chocolate smell amazing there.  Later in the afternoon, we decided to head to Hell's Canyon and it was the deepest canyon in US! It was definitely worth a visit!

On the fourth day, we did another hike to Deadman's Falls in the morning along Hurricane Creek. We loved the hiking trail that went through the meadow! In the afternoon, we took Wallowa Tram to the top of Mount Howard. Mount Howard was one of the tallest peak and we were able to see Wallowa Lake from the top!

When we head back home on Friday, we found out that there was wild fire along Columbia Gorge. We could see ashes falling down from the sky onto the car and I84 was closed. We had to drive on Highway 14 on Washington state side instead. It was extremely smoky and visibility was very low.

Nevertheless, Wallowa Lake was an amazing place to visit. We would definitely go there again and explore the area again!