A Free Trip to Seattle for Christmas?
A bonus trip Wonderwirling in Seattle with Alex and Kelly
December 21, 2021 — Albany, Ore. Ping! Ping! (Pause) Ping!!
I looked up from my sewing machine in the direction of the alerts that kept coming from my phone. A few texts lit up the screen from my man of few words, Alex.
It’s happening!
My boss wants to send me to Seattle this week!
Should I go??
Do you want to come with?
He just said they got a hotel room at The Hyatt!
My husband has been working as a loading supervisor at UPS for about six months. During the holidays their workload doubles with the inundation of holiday shopping and online sales, so his boss had been sending other “supes” to help deliver packages at the larger facilities in the region. Alex had already done a shift in Portland, but ever since his co-worker got sent to Boise Alex had been chomping at the bit to get sent somewhere more exciting and far away than Portland for work.
He got his wish, and just in time for Christmas too.
We’d just picked up my friend Kelly at the airport a few days earlier. She’d flown here to spend Christmas with me and my family. It wouldn’t be appropriate to strand her here in Albany without us, and I wasn’t sure that a city mouse visiting from NYC would want to share a hotel room with us in Seattle for a few days when she could be enjoying the country air. She was working remotely, so she was tied up with her computer from 5 a.m. to 2 p.m. Would she want to go?
Ping! Ping!
The excitement in the little pings of texts from Alex was quite palpable, so feeling a little torn I texted him to go ahead and tell his boss that he would go and that I would talk to Kelly and report back on whether or not I could go too. He sure had a lot of excitement in him for someone who had started work at 1 a.m. that day and I wasn’t about to squash it!
Kelly decided to be spontaneous and take advantage of the free trip to a new city being dangled under her nose. I was prepared to stay behind with her as I had just been gone for two weeks already and had plenty of work to do, but I also have a very hard time saying no to these types of opportunities.
“We’ll have to leave right when you get off work,” I warned. The poor thing had just spent 6 hours on an airplane to get here and here we were about to coop her up in a car for five more hours.
It was a Tuesday. We watched the glimmering Emerald city come into view and Alex drove us into the heart of Seattle to our hotel right across from the space needle. We pulled the sofa out for Kelly and we were all asleep in a matter of minutes.
We dispersed early in the morning: Alex to work at the UPS facility, Kelly to her laptop, and me to the lobby. When I decided to come on this paid-for vacation, I decided I would spend lots of time doing what I usually don’t have time for at home, and that is writing.
The next few days went as follows:
From 6-10 a.m. every day I would drink copious amounts of free tea and tap tap away at my computer in the lobby. From 10-2, I would explore Seattle solo on foot, and in the evenings I would meet back up with Kelly and Alex for a meal and more exploring.
Unlike Portland, Seattle feels like a grown-up city. It also feels as coastal as it is, which was strange to be in a grown up city that smells salty and is filled with gulls. There weren’t any tourists out that close to Christmas, so I had the whole city almost to myself.
I walked all around the Space Needle, which seems to be the main tourist hub. I delighted in the playground outside of the Pop Culture Museum and dragged Alex back, later on, to climb the rope tower as if we were at recess in the second grade. I pressed my nose up against the glass at the Amazon Spheres and took in the indoor jungle of plants growing inside the glass bubble-shaped castle.
I tried almost everything on the menu at Piroshky Piroshky at Pike’s Place (bakery research, you know!) and brought Alex and Kelly down to watch the men throw fish in the market. Kelly shared a bowl of famous clam chowder with me and I ate plenty of sandwiches from a shop crammed with the most beautiful deli creations you’ve ever seen — and that’s coming from someone who has no affinity for sandwiches.
The market was packed with smells and colors. Jars of jewel-toned spices lined shop windows and a rainbow of fresh fruits and veggies spilled out into the sidewalks. You could smell salt and fish and something warm being pulled out of the oven at all times.
Alex almost lost his mind inside a Pike’s Place shop made up exclusively of maps. Geography is his favorite hobby, so I finally found his equivalent to my fabric store. He handled each map and atlas the way I handle 100% silk de chine or wool crepe at my beloved Mill End Store in Portland. I doubt the shop owners have ever had a patron come nearly to tears in front of their American Railroad map from the 1800’s before. Bless him.
I discovered what must be the city’s best almond croissant at La Parisienne Bakery, and I spent two hours in a two-room exhibit of 19th-century impressionist cow paintings at the Frye Museum. My grandfather, a rancher who loves only my grandmother more than he loves cows, wouldn’t be caught dead in Seattle, but I would have given anything to see him in that exhibit. I texted him pictures and he replied: “Now those are some real cows!” The rest of the museum kind of freaked me out, but those cows were all I needed in order to leave a five-star review.
The Seattle Art Museum was a bit, well… it wasn’t New York or Boston. Silly me! I spared no shame in pulling my usual “student of the world” card to get a discounted ticket, which was just as well because they were asking East Coast prices for mostly West Coast art.
I’m not opinionated or anything.
That being said, I thoroughly enjoyed their Porcelain Room. Entering the room feels like sliding down the walls of a kaleidoscope. The walls are carefully arranged with each little teacup, teapot, and saucer in mosaic patterns coded by color. I also enjoyed their collection of African masks which were lined along the escalator on the top floor in every shape and size, including an 8ft mask of a snake that was meant to help bring heaven down.
On the second day the always-creative Anthro windows pulled me into their happy, colorful, and downright cheerful world of feminine joy. I told myself I was doing fashion "research" because I need to know what’s trending at all times, but I got roped into some real trouble by a saleswoman on the top floor.
May I dress, you, doll? She was middle-aged with orangeish hair and green sequined striped pants. I knew I was in for an adventure!
She saw me ogling at a gorgeous green velvet burnout gown and talked me into trying it on. While she had me in the dressing room she just kept bringing more and more to try on. It turned into somewhat of a fashion show, where she would throw in a new set of hangers, I would put on their garments according to her styling, and then do a grand reveal.
There was a pink and green sparkling mini-dress, an orange sequin pencil skirt with a red sweater, a floral embroidered bell-sleeved number, a psychedelic maxi-dress, and endless others of similar wonderful outrageousness.
My trip to Anthropologie wasn't on the itinerary, but playing dress-up with the saleslady on the top floor turned out to be the most fun I had on the whole trip! The green dress was sensational. I sent a picture to Alex expecting him to encourage my practicality, but he just texted back: "Xmas present to you? GET IT!" and that's why I love the man. I ended up ordering it, and undoubtedly with thanks to my new friend, I got the $240 dress for 90 dollars. Merry Christmas to me!
I walked to Chinatown and poked my head into a few tea shops. I didn't have time to hunt down an egg tart, but I made a list of places I wanted to eat in the neighborhood on another trip to Seattle. Some sort of major crime had been committed just before I got there, so the streets were packed with at least forty cop cars and there was actual crime scene tape telling me I might want to keep that particular visit short. Alex was just getting off work so he picked me up o his way back to the hotel to save my feet the extra couple miles. We never did figure out what had gone down, but at one point we drove by a parked ambulance with a zipped body bag wheeling towards it. Yikes.
On a calmer note, Kelly and I went to the Chihuly Garden & Glass Museum together on the first day. I’ve seen blown glass before, but nothing compares to Chihuly’s scale. I was first introduced to Chihuly at the V&A Museum in London where his giant chandelier hangs in the rotunda. I also fell in love with his flower ceiling at the Bellagio in Las Vegas.
Each massive work glistened like a shining miracle. You have very little control over glassblowing, and there is a pretty high casualty rate for most works over a certain size. Here, walking through a glass garden of human-sized flowers and even larger chandeliers, I could hardly imagine how any of it was made.
A favorite part of the museum was the cafeteria. It wasn’t operating, but you could still walk through and enjoy the exhibit of the artist’s collections of inspiration. He collects various antiques that inspire his choice of colors and form. The ceiling was covered in hanging antique accordions and each table was a shadow box filled with different sets of vintage toys, pocketknives, wristwatches, tape recorders, and bottle openers. Apparently, Chihuly’s home is filled exactly in this way with different collections of his that inspire him. It resonated with me that an artist should always be surrounded by objects that spark the imagination and say something, if only to him or her.
We were lucky enough to be there just as someone was giving a glassblowing demonstration, which really added to the experience. The whole audience held their breath as the man wielded his growing vase around on a metal shaft. No one knew until the end of it would break or not in the creation process as there are so many temperature variables.
Another favorite part was a glass cafeteria-sized room overlooking an outdoor garden with glass installations. The entire ceiling was filled with orange and red glass flowers as large as dinner plates.
Later when we’d caught up with Alex, we all explored the Seattle sculpture garden, which turned out to be more of a park with a few modern installations than a garden, but that’s just my bias for old things speaking.
We took in the sunset over the water and watched the boats climb up and down the sound. There were a few clouds but you could just make out the lines of Mount Olympia on the horizon. If it were painted I would have told you it wasn’t real. That’s how beautiful, and how strange too, the view was. If it weren’t so cold I would have insisted we watch it go completely black.
On the last night, we popped into a windowless Moroccan restaurant, Marrakesh.
We entered into a storefront that had been completely transformed into an enchanted Moroccan tent, with tapestries hanging from the walls and ceiling, and short little tables and cushions lining the edges.
Our host welcomed us and hung our coats. He then washed our hands and we told him to surprise us with three entries. He brought out a giant basket of freshly baked bread baked with fresh herbs. We didn’t know that each entree also came with soup, salads, an appetizer, and dessert. The man kept bringing plate after plate until we all thought we might explode, and that is really saying something of Alex and his hollow legs. We’d feasted on chicken and two types of lamb cooked in decadent sauces made also with dried fruit and nuts. One of the appetizers was a flaky light pastry filled with ground chicken and nuts, topped with powdered sugar. It was one of the most unique things I have ever eaten. The server poured tea from three feet away from the glasses with a practiced hand behind his back into clear glasses for us to enjoy with our dessert of rice pudding.
We waddled back out into the real world and I got the horrible idea to make everyone go home by way of the Amazon Spheres to ride the grown-up friendly sea saws.
“You want us to do what??” Alex and Kelly said in unison, gripping their bellies.
I could hardly move, but the night was young and we were leaving in the morning. I had to show them the sea saws then or they would miss them altogether! I hadn’t been able to ride them by myself when I’d discovered them because, well, it takes two, to sea-saw you know!
Somehow, when we got to the spheres and everyone took in the giant musical sea saws, we all forgot our fullness and rushed aboard them, again like kids at recess in the second grade. This time, however, Alex and I weren’t the only adults having way too much fun at kids’ games. The other sea saws were filled with fully grown humans laughing and rocking back and forth with child-like glee.
We spent the better part of an hour taking turns at the sea saws, laughing like drunks until I actually fell off.
The trip was everything Alex had hoped for, and he enjoyed getting to deliver packages for a change as well as learning about Seattle. Kelly got to work from a cozy room at the Hyatt as opposed to our freezing cold, windowless, office at the bakery, and I got a few more days of Wonderwhirling in.
We packed up bright and early on the morning of Christmas Eve and Alex headed the car south. We were headed to our family farm for Christmas, so we inflicted another seven hours of car-time on Kelly, not counting the four it took to get back home a few days after that, but she took it like a champ and in the end, what mattered was that we were together and we had taken that dangled opportunity and squeezed it for all it was worth.
