Note to self: Hey goofus, since you generally go on vacation in January, you might start thinking about heading south. Last year you went to Illinois in the dead of winter to see your new nephew. OK, I’ll give you that one—your motives were family oriented and pure and you did plan to keep the visit short and head all the way to the Florida Keys for the remainder of your hiatus. Alas, Mother Nature sent a mother of a snowstorm instead, so those plans had to be scratched.

This year you thought you’d check out the Seattle bureau of The Beachcomber and visit with Breanne Boland. She had assured you that the rain thing was way overstated and it really wasn’t cold, even in January. She was right about the cold, but this January Seattle was alternately chortling about setting a record for consecutive days of rain and lamenting said rain for causing houses to roll downhill. Local news media talking heads just weren’t sure which side they were on. On the one hand, the record 33 days of measurable rain had been standing since the mid 1950s, but the rain was causing lots of local flooding and mudslides.

And so it was that I saw one of the prettiest cities in the United States through a gray misty haze. I spent more than a week with wet cuffs and flattened hair.
Further, although I always wear perfume, I fear my overwhelming scent during my visit was Eau de Icy Hot. Wet and cold do a real number on my aging arthritic joints, but I gamely limped along aided by my distinctive cane with the canine chewed handle.

On the plus side, Seattle is quite a friendly city. It boasts lots of interesting public art and green spaces, courteous drivers, and all the culture a person might desire in the form of lots of interesting movie theaters with lobby lounges, museums, an awesome downtown public library and much more.

I was able to see the fine film Capote, which I suspect will never be shown here. I also didn’t think Brokeback Mountain was likely to come here—but am happy to see is has now opened—so I saw that one too.

In the case of Capote, I doubt I’ll ever see an actor inhabit so completely a character I can remember seeing on the Dick Cavett show many years ago and whose writing skills were superb. If Philip Seymour Hoffman doesn’t win an Oscar, something is very wrong with the voters of that prestigious acting award. I’ve long admired his chamelonlike talent in a variety of small roles, but in this film he is utterly astonishing, but I digress.

The trip also yielded some interesting trips to restaurants. Not once during the week did I eat anything resembling American food, except the breakfast served at the lovely B&B where I holed up for the week.

The weather made soups seem quite inviting and one Mexican restaurant served up a huge bowl of excellent tortilla soup for about $3.50. A Vietnamese joint served up soft comforting noodles swimming in fragrant broth with bean sprouts and spicy sauces that could be tossed in if desired. Fabulous, soul warming, ample sized servings of affordable food were found all over the city. Of course I had a guide who had already scoped things out in advance, but still such restaurants were all over the place.

Seattle is also the home of Starbucks, so there were more than a few of them around, but also lots of other coffee shops. I did visit the very first Starbucks, which was small and offered absolutely no place to sit, which I found quite odd.

The one thing Breanne and I didn’t have time to do was to go skipping with our laptops into a coffee house and geeking out, but it wasn’t for lack of opportunity. Virtually every coffee house that wasn’t a Starbucks offered free wireless Internet service and many locals were taking advantage of this every day.

They say travel broadens the mind, and I guess that’s true. It certainly broadened my worldview when I was made to stand spread eagled in two airports while literally being patted down by airport security after my artificial parts set off the metal detector. Luckily I didn’t have to remove my shoes, which virtually every other person was doing. Go figure.

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