Seattle - Tacoma - Puyallup

First trip to the Pacific Northwest! We spent 3.5 beautiful days (with not a drop of rain - can you believe it?) visiting our friends. Ben and Jieun were gracious hosts and wonderful guides.

They introduced us to all the essentials ... especially the coffee. I had some of the best coffees of my life - doppios, a macchiato, and a half of a Café Nico, which is a divine little drink of very concentrated espresso, half and half, vanilla, orange, and spice. It is all the best things about sweetness and all the best things about bitterness pooled into one tiny cup, topped with foam, dusted with cinnamon, garnished with an orange peel. Indeed, divine.

We ventured to the Museum of Glass in Tacoma and were mesmerized in the "Hot Shop" where we witnessed artists and artisans fashioning flaming molten glass into something else entirely.

The landscape was mesmerizing in a different way, a calming blue and green way. Wherever we went, Mount Rainier followed, sometimes bright and sometimes gray, sometimes standing in the background and sometimes impossible to ignore. Its looming presence was invigorating. Beneath the prominence of "The Mountain" ran the wide zigzag of the Cascade Range and beneath that, the serrated edge of the pine tree horizon persisted as far as the eye could see.

And some day, when I give up all my endeavors to take up ceramics or glass art and create a piece to commemorate this trip, it will be this notched and jagged skyline that will inspire the pattern for the piece, which I will give to Ben and Jieun to say thanks.

Or perhaps I shall learn to depict Mount Rainier in the foam of a tiny macchiato.


Ben & Jieun at Forza in Puyallup

Sergio flying a kite at Owen's Beach in Point Defiance Park, Tacoma

the view of The Mountain from The Sounder (commuter train) Click on this photo - it's more stunning in larger format.

Museum of Glass sculptures in the fall

cheers!