So the Seattle weekend was
unbelievably perfect! Here's the blow-by-blow:
We arrived Seattle Thursday night at around 7:30pm local time, picked up from Sea-Tac by our friend Travis* and headed back to Travis, Mary and Camille's uber-cute house in Tacoma.
Friday was phenomenal, kicking around with Travis, taking the ferry, seeing the panorama of Seattle from the top of the building Mary works in (the tallest west of the Missisippi or some such!!). A nice meal at our fav Seattle brew pub, the
Elysian in Capitol Hill (discovered on our 1st trip to Seattle in '06). John swears by The Immortal IPA... Personally I'm a Perseus Porter or Dragonstooth Stout person.
Then off to the Dalai Lama show, saw the Dalai Lama which was... there are no words. The format was a bit awkward, Dave was nervous (and adorable!) and if you've read the Dalai Lama books then what he said basically reiterated those messages... but to see him? To be in the same room with him (OK, granted, a BIG room...)? To take part in a little piece of history? Well, that was the thing. Another life moment engraved on my heart.
The Dave & Tim concert was nothing short of magical. Dave was unusually lucid (I think he parties his ass off at the Gorge!!!) and his banter in between sets was one of the best parts. Tim Reynolds? I'd never heard of him (other than in the context that he occasionally does shows with Dave), had sort of "who is this guy?" attitude in the back of my mind. And then I heard him play. Yep, he can hold his own - both with and without Dave Matthews... which is pretty cool.
Saturday was ridiculous. I decided on Saturday that all the folks in Seattle just lie to everyone else and tell them that Seattle is rainy all the time, cause I tell you, I just haven't seen it!!! It was high 70's and perfect. We did the Seattle tourist thing and kicked around Pike Place Market for a couple of hours, had some lunch, picked up the most amazing spread for dinner. The resultant meal was lavish and delectable - my mouth is watering thinking about it. The appetizer consisted of an artisan cheese tray with pears, dried apricots, smoked almonds, handmade cracker/toast/thin-cut biscotti like (?) thingies with dates & walnuts in them and two gorgeous heirloom tomatoes sliced thin and served with a sprinkle of sea salt and balsamic. The meal for the meat-eaters was salmon steaks, I had a portobello cap filled with artisan goat cheese with dill and chopped pine nuts (YUM!). The side was some rather average (by comparison to all the other goodies) asparagus from the market.
The afternoon began with the meal around the umbrella-topped table and ended with the chairs circled around a fire pit in the brisk clear evening.
The entire experience, touch down to take off, was phenomenal.**
* We met Travis, Mary, and Mary's daughter Camille (then 3) at the Gorge in 2006 when our tent wound up pitched next to theirs at the Wild Horse Campground. We all enjoyed each other so much that we connected and camped in parallel again in 2007, and plan to execute a complex year three plan involving a caravan and way too much camping gear (can you say kiddie inflatable pool?!) in August.
** You may wonder at my overuse of this word in describing the weekend. Not only is it a perfect descriptor, but on Saturday night I realized I had been overusing this word the whole weekend, in a singsong tone, "pheNO-meNOL." Like a gay decorator, describing the perfect accent piece... Think in terms of that accentuation and tone (!). We all laughed heartily at the way I had expressed it, but it does quite naturally sum up the weekend in a word.
