TOURING SEATTLE

I was born and raised in Seattle and nothing pleases me more than to be a tourist in my own town. Jim and I, and our friends Jeff and Lynda, set out after work last Wednesday and took the evening flight out of the Charles M. Schulz Sonoma County airport (1/2 mile from work) to Seattle. This flight stops in Portland, OR, which is a perfect restroom and coffee break. After we took off again for Seattle, we were treated to this fabulous sunset and full moon view of Mt. Hood from the airplane window.

Our first day's adventure was to just look around downtown Seattle. As we were staying near SeaTac airport, we decided to take the fairly new light rail to downtown so we wouldn't have to deal with a car. I am very impressed by the light rail system which it took Seattle voters decades to commit to. This is the modern station at Tukwilla.

As with many things in Seattle, there is art work incorporated throughout functional things. The floor tiles of this station had lovely carvings. This one captured my heart, because, deep down, I believe every true Seattlite feels this.

I absolutely love taking public transportation, and most of all light rail.

The Sound Link track heads toward downtown Seattle via the Rainier Valley, then through Beacon Hill and north past both sports stadiums, the International District and on into downtown via the bus tunnel. The last stop is Westlake Center where riders can come out of the tunnel right into the Nordstrom Flagship store (site of the former Frederick and Nelson department store, where Jim and I used to work).

Downtown Seattle has some really great old architectural details among the ultra modern high rises. I love the fact that many of these old buildings have been preserved.

Right away we headed for one of our favorite lunch spots, the Virginia Inn at 1st and Virginia. Jim and I have been coming here for lunch since the early 1980's when it got transformed from a divy tavern into a funky lunchspot. The fun part was that during the transition, the "regulars" who could be seen on their bar stools as early as 10 am still came and mixed with the younger trendy crowd.

http://www.virginiainnseattle.com/history.php

Today, the VI, as we call it, has expanded and the bar stools are gone but they still have their fabulous gumbo on the menu.

After our fortifying meal, we headed to the ultimate Seattle tourist destination: the Pike Place Market. The Market was built in 1907 and is one of the oldest continually operating farmer's market in the US. I have been coming to the market since I was a kid and I never tire of it. Locals know never to go on Saturday as it is packed with tourists. This was a Thursday and it was still very crowded. We showed Jeff and Lynda some originals: the original Sur La Table (more stuff packed in there than in our more spacious store in Santa Rosa) and the original Starbucks (so jammed with Japanese tourists we couldn't even get in the door).

In its first heyday, the Pike Place Market was a venue for local truck farmers to sell their food. My parents' really good friends, Ruth and Bill, sold produce from their Maple Valley farm at the Market for years. In the 1970's the demographic of the Market changed as more hippie-types moved in with handicraft items - homemade candles, lotions, wooden toys and stained glass, which I made and sold there in high school. At the time there was a hue and cry from the farmers about the changes but Seattle had a vision and put lots of money into renovating the decrepit buildings, while keeping the original ambiance. Today the Market is a vibrant part of the city which still combines local produce (and fish, of course) with hand made items, restaurants, low income housing, and various odd retail shops.

Anyone who has been at the Market knows about the famous bathrooms, for years only marked by the chromosomes on the floor:

I guess this confused lots of people because they have since labeled each door with a hexagonal tile representation of a man in pants and a woman in a dress. Also, there is a certain seaminess that is missing from the restrooms and they have been updated with modern yet fitting fixtures.


Downtown Seattle has done a good job of integrating high rise condos with shops and restaurants, which is good for keeping the city core alive. One of the really nice things is all those inner city folks have lots of open spaces for their living rooms.


This one, a park on the north side of the Pike Place Market, has spectacular views of Elliott Bay, downtown, West Seattle, ferries and, on a clear day, the Olympic Mountains.



From the Pike Place Market it is an easy down hill stroll past some really neat shops (The Spanish Table, and the Paris Grocery, e.g.) to the bottom of the Harbor Steps, a beautiful promenade from the waterfront to First Avenue, ending up at the Seattle Art Museum with its iconic Hammering Man.




Also at the top of the Harbor Steps, at 1st and University, is Ipanema, a Brazilian restaurant which features Rodizio, a Brazilian style of dining with friends. Here's what Wikipedia has to say about Rodizio:

"... a restaurant service in Brazilian and Portuguese restaurants. One pays a fixed price (prix fixe) and the waiters bring an offering of food to each customer at several times throughout the meal, until the customers signify that they have had enough. In churrascarias, servers come to the table with knives and a skewer, on which are speared various kinds of meat, most commonly local cuts of beef, pork, or chicken....

Foods served at a churrascaria often include:

• Filet mignon chunks wrapped in bacon
• Turkey chunks wrapped in bacon (these two are usually two-bite sized)
• Sirloin steak (cut semicircular and served in slices)
• Roast beef (served like sirloin steak)
• Rump Cover (called Picanha in Portuguese)
• Beef short ribs
• Lamb
• Pork ribs
• Chorizo or some other spicy Iberian pork sausage
• Chicken hearts
• Grilled dark-meat chicken
• Grilled pineapple or banana (meant as a palate cleanser between courses)"

http://www.ipanemabraziliangrill.us/

You get 19 different meats which come to the table on skewers. You can have as much as you want, although we pooped out before we tried all 19 types. Here is one of our "skewer guys" bringing a selection. He slices it most of the way down then you pick it up with tongs.

The "salad bar" (it was SO much more) had some amazing choices and flavors.

In addition, there were grilled prawns and we finished off with the most excellent grilled pineapple coated in cinnamon. Next time, I will probably opt for just the salad bar as it was very satisfying all on its own.

After this meal we were so bloated that it was all we could do to trudge up one block to the University entrance of the bus tunnel to wait for our train home.



Another grand day out in Seattle.

Tomorrow, CLAM DIGGING.

MIKE'S OLD HOUSE

Jim and I have known our friend Mike Tench since our Frederick and Nelson days, in the early 1980s where Mike and I worked in the deli kitchen and Jim was the warehouseman who delivered our produce. Mike takes DIY to new heights. He is not only creative and inquisitive, but also a very handy guy. He loves nothing better than doing "projects." There was the Tiffany Lamp phase (he cast the bronze, made the stained glass shade) and the Chicken House phase (so beautiful he was interviewed on two TV shows about backyard chickens), to name a couple.


One of his favorite activities is buying houses and fixing them up to rent. This time he out-did himself. Mike found a wonderful old farmhouse in West Seattle that was still pretty much in its original 1909 condition. Here's a photo of it from the past.

The thing that really sold Mike on this house was that it still had the original wood cook stove in the kitchen (with a modern one alongside).

Mike has been working to upgrade essential things, like plumbing and electrical, while keeping the old time charm. The original kitchen did not have a sink in it! (One had to go to the pantry for washing). So, of course Mike found a wonderful farmhouse sink and installed it with this lovely bee-tile back splash.


He also found a really cool NEW old-looking iron support for the sink.

And, he got a neat idea at an auction where he bought a lot of embroidered pillowcases - they are now the sink skirt which hides the plumbing.


A big part of the charm of this little 3 bedroom house is the tall ceilings. This is looking into the pantry.

The bathroom has a claw foot bathtub, of course, and this lovely sink.

But there is a little bit of a problem, if you are at all tall, getting INTO the bathroom.

Mike's farmhouse is in a great location south of the West Seattle Junction. The house sits deep on the lot, which gives maximum privacy as you sit on the wrap around porch.

There is also a full basement, accessible from an outside stairwell, and a stand alone garage. Mike is really proud of his farmhouse and looking forward to renting it to just the right people.

Still to come from our Northwest trip - a visit with Dad and Multanoma Falls with Lee and Louise.

Audrey

MY TRIP TO THE NORTHWEST

Last week on Thursday I left work early and went straight to the Charles M. Schulz Sonoma County Airport, which is a few blocks from our clinic. I took the evening flight to Portland, Oregon and was met by Jim in our van. OK, to back up, Jim took off on the Monday before this for a road trip up the coast to combine seeing his brother, Lee, and wife Louise, in Vancouver, Washington, with a quick trip to Seattle to pick up boxes stored at my brother Larry's house. When Jim picked me up around 10 pm on Thursday, we went back to Lee and Louise's for the night so we could get an early start on Friday for our road trip to Seattle.

The next morning we stopped for gas and the first amusing thing we saw was this sign posted at the gas station.

We felt this got our road trip off to a great start. Before we could even pull across the street for Peet's coffee, I made Jim stop the car so I could take a picture of this mass of daffodils.

I was so excited to see my first Cascade mountain from I-5. This is Mt. Adams.

Here is St. Helens, missing her top.

Our trusty VW van was very comfortable for this trip and we had lots of good music to play.

We stopped for lunch in some nameless town near Camas, Washington at a mediocre Taco del Mar. A bright spot, though, was this gorgeous birch tree in the parking lot.

Even though spring is a little behind in the Northwest, I couldn't help but notice how beautiful all the cherry trees were - maybe because everything else looked so wintry.

One of my favorite portions of all of I-5 is this area just north of Olympia.

The highway dips down here and at the bottom you have a great view of the Nisqually delta and the first view of southern Puget Sound. Unfortunately there were too many cars in the way to get a photo of that treasured view.

But, the first glimpse of Mt. Rainier never fails to thrill me.

Here she is shining over Ft. Lewis, near Tacoma, Washington.

We arrived at my brother Larry and sister-in-law Carolyn's house around 3 pm. They live in Sea Tac (yes, named for the airport) which is just south of Seattle. They are on a lovely little lake, Angle Lake, which is where my Mom first taught school back in about 1936. Here is the view from Larry and Carolyn's porch.

And the next morning, the same view in the fog.

This was a very quick trip to Seattle so we had to visit with Larry and Carolyn when we could. They are both really busy folks even though they are retired. Larry manages an apartment building and is also involved in Bible Study Fellowship, which keeps him on the road quite a bit throughout the Northwest. Carolyn has learned the tax business and now works the season at H&R Block dealing with Spanish-speaking clients. She also continues to lead Vista Mission Teams quite often to Mexico, where they provide glasses and dental services to people. In fact, the next morning, Carolyn had a Vista Team meeting at her house to get ready for the next trip. Here she is checking the time as her team meeting is about to start.

Carolyn is a very organized person. Here she has the uniforms (scrubs) all divvied out by size.

She still has time to have a lovely garden.

Our quick stay with Larry and Carolyn allowed us to pick up a bunch of boxes stored in their cupboard from when we cleaned out Mom and Dad's house last fall. Pretty hard to take thousands of slides on an airplane! We also took advantage of this quick trip to see my Dad and our friend Mike, but those will be on a separate blog, along with our visit with Lee and Louise.

Audrey

IT'S SPRING IN SANTA ROSA

We are blessed in Northern California to have spring early. All around our county now there are fields and fields of mustard blooming. So beautiful. I always think of our spring as starting in February. That's when our daffodils are at their peak. This guy is a tete-a-tete and only about 3 inches high.

On one of our (few) recent days without rain, we noticed how gorgeous our rosemary looked - and the bees were buzzing all over!

Out in our front yard, next to the rosemary, we have several kinds of lavender growing. This one is especially lovely.

On a brief tour of the yard (between rain storms) I was pleased to see that this succulent not only didn't get hurt by the frost, but looked like it was thriving (along with LOTS of weeds).

This Euryops is a real show off giving much needed color during late winter. By summer it will be more or less dormant but the real advantage is that he doesn't want much water.

The plants in our yard aren't the only ones soaking up the sunshine.

More soon on my trip to the Northwest to see family and friends. Happy Spring!

Audrey