Travel Chronicles-Part Three

In a nutshell, Seattle is the most accommodating city I’ve every visited. The traffic isn’t bad, the summer weather is mild, the layout is intuitive, the people are disarming and the sea food is mouthwatering. We walked from the space needle, to the aquarium, to the market, to the library, to the museum of history and industry, with relative ease. No one ever pan-handled. No one ever hustled. We never got lost, or too hot, or too bug bitten. The whole Seattle experience epitomized what it is to be pleasant.

Come to think of it, maybe it was too pleasant, eerily so, the stuff of a hipster’s version of Pleasantville. During our 48-hour stay we encountered an epic zombie apocalypse in the city center featuring hundreds of face-painted walking dead enthusiasts, an international beer festival, a 13-hour “Nic Till You’re Sick” Nicolas Cage marathon, and a wooden boat festival, at which we bought matching “Center for Wooden Boats T-shirts”, so we’ve got that going for us.

But even the rowdy stuff wasn’t really rowdy. We walked to a dive bar to get a sip of local attitude, and were met by a city softball team celebrating a victory with a pint, you know, the stuff of Cheers.

There’s more on which to mediate—the view of Puget Sound from our century old b&b; the marvelous way succulents grow like anemones from retaining walls; the unfairly cute manner in which otters eat clams off their tummies. Yes, Seattle was damn near perfect with its sense of humor, slight edginess, easy-going culture and breathtaking surroundings.

Imagine my dismay when I heard that one day, Mt. Rainier is likely to blow the whole place to bits.