A Glass-Filled Day!

Friday – Seattle

Hello!

I do apologize for not blogging last night, but sleep overtook me after a nice but long day.

We were up fairly early, and down for breakfast here at the hotel.  It was very nice, but to be honest, they didn’t have salsa for the scrambled eggs…and scrambled eggs without salsa is just – scrambled eggs!  About 9 we decided that we would head out for the Space Needle (about 45 minutes on foot), as the Chihuly Garden and Glass Museum opened at 10. 

Well, it was certainly a good thing that we left when we did, as they are tearing up ALL the streets in our area!  It looks like Tucson with all the orange signs and cones!  There were sidewalks blocked off, and cyclists and walkers being re-routed – It is normally 1¼ mile from the Silver Cloud Hotel where we are staying to the Space Needle, but I can tell you, we walked a lot farther than that!

Finally made it with just a few minutes to spare before the museum opened.  And wow, when it did…!

I find that people are either Chihuly glass people or they’re not…there doesn’t seem to be much “middle ground.”  We happen to be BIG Chihuly fans – the botanic garden exhibit in Phoenix that he did several years ago was amazing, and it’s scheduled to return either this fall or spring…so exciting!

At any rate, the Glass Museum was phenomenal!  One of my favorite pieces was the ceiling that he did – photos are good, but just really can’t do justice to all the different patterns and colors!   We did a complete tour, then took a lemonade break so that we could sit out in the garden and just ‘be’ with the glass…

Walked back to the hotel via a different route … down through a traffic tunnel, which is definitely not fun, but we thought was a bit shorter than our route there! 

It was now about noon, and we needed to pick up Mom at Sea-Tac at 5:20 p.m.  Decided that we would head to the Museum of Glass (MOG) in Tacoma – obviously a glass kinda day!  (We had planned on going to the glass museum on our return from Victoria, but as in the interim there is a change of seasons, the museum won’t be open then!  So!!)  Ran into incredibly difficult traffic heading south on Highway 5 to Tacoma – I mean, the LA-completely-stopped kind of traffic – and this was the middle of a weekday!  Just amazing – we are SO spoiled with Tucson traffic; this was terrible!  Finally got to an exit ramp and were able to bail on to surface streets to finish our trip…got there about 1:30 p.m., and were of course starving!

Decided on food first thing – very nice café attached to the Museum.  Robert had potato/bacon soup (which was good) and a baguette with ham sandwich.  I had their cob salad with blue cheese dressing; very good! 

Then, out into the museum!  They had an excellent exhibit of work from Australian artists, one of whom is their current “artist-in-residence” and was working with the Hot Shop crew on a piece of glass.  The Hot Shot team are employees of the museum who work in support of the visiting artists.  Basically, they are the ones who work closest to the molten glass in making the artists creations into reality.  It was all fun to watch; glass is such magic stuff! 

Robert bought me a beautiful piece of glass from their shop – a small blue wavy edge bowl; I just love it!

Then it was time to get to Sea-Tac to pick up Mom.  Fortunately, we were now going against traffic, and made excellent time; we had been really worried about traffic backing up, but it didn’t happen, thankfully!  We were amazed at how little signage there was to the airport!  Don’t know what out-of-towners do, or folks who don’t have good GPS systems…interesting!

Parked the car and into the terminal.  Mom’s flight arrived on time, and after collecting her luggage (which I’m not sure if will fit into the car, but R says not to worry…) we were off to the hotel.

Out a bit later to Chandler’s Crabhouse for dinner, just a short ride down the street, and located right on Lake Union.  Had forgotten that Boise State plays the University of Washington today in football – there was that Boise royal blue and screaming orange everywhere…

We had a lovely bottle of New Zealand Sauvignon Blanc while we were waiting to be seated.  Then dinner!  We started with an appetizer of crab and artichoke dip with chips; yummy!  Robert had crab soup for starters, and followed it with soft shell crab.  (He said it was great, but that crab really shouldn’t be fried, as it has a fairly delicate flavor.)  I had their wonderful clam chowder to start, with a HUGE crab cake and three sauces.  Mom also had the chowder, and followed this with crab Rockefeller, which she enjoyed very much.  Mom the only one up for dessert – crème brulé, which she said was good, but not as good as Robert’s!

Back to the hotel about 9:30 p.m. and crashing shortly thereafter!!

More later!

m

xxx