For our last day in Seattle, the first thing I wanted to do was to visit the Seattle Japanese Garden, which is nestled inside the huge Washington Arboretum.
I knew I wanted to visit because I love Japanese gardens, but I didn’t quite know what to expect: this one is not as big or as famous as the one in Portland, and all my guidebooks mention it only in passing, but (spoilers!) it turned out to be a highlight of our visit! This goes to show that when on holiday guidebooks will only take you so far, and ultimately you have to do the things you like to do.
After paying a $10 ticket at the gate, our path into the garden immediately split in two, as it forms a loop around a small but immaculately landscaped pond. The trees haven’t yet turned, but when the sun shone down on the opposite side, we could see gold and orange colors among the sea of green.
Japanese gardens make the most of reduced spaces, so this one still managed to have different viewing platforms, bridges, and streams to direct our gaze as we peacefully strolled down the path, accompanied only by three or four other visitors. I took so many pictures -the garden was so photogenic in the morning sun- that it’s agony to choose just a few to show you!
My initial plan had been to follow up this visit, keeping in theme, with the Seattle Museum of Asian Art, a specialized branch of the Seattle Art Museum, but to my horror I discovered (only last night and only by accident) that it closes on Tuesdays as well as Mondays! I was disappointed but there’s not a lot I could do about it, so I looked for alternatives. There are commercial avenues like Ballard and Broadway that get mentioned in guides and online, but I had the suspicion that visiting those would be like Hawthorne in Portland, where we’d show up and then not really vibe with the shops, in which case we’d be stranded far from anything else.
In the end, we made our way to the University of Washington district, on the northeast side of Seattle. Firstly we wanted to check out the Burke Museum of Natural History and Culture, a large wood-paneled building next to the campus.
I do not care for natural history museums so this hadn’t been on my priority list, but of its three floors, while two are focused on fossils and fauna and other natural themes, one is dedicated to Native American culture, including displays of traditional clothes, longboats, totem poles, and other archeological items as well as modern-day apparel and some exhibits about current customs and languages. I learned that there are 39 different Native languages registered only in this area of Washington state!
This is part of why I settled on this place: I can see the Impressionists in France, and all around the world for that matter, but these are cultures that I don’t normally learn about back home, or even elsewhere in the United States for that matter. While small, the Burke collection makes for an interesting visit. Plus, we had our coffee break at the Off the Rez cafe, which offers food with traditional Native influences. I had a cedar and blackberry tea: a peculiar taste, a bit sweet for me, but not bad!
Next up, we walked over to the University of Washington campus, which was teeming with crowds of students probably coming back from lunch. Our goal was to visit the Suzzallo Library, this bizarre cathedral-looking building in the middle of an otherwise hideous assortment of concrete and brick buildings. When you walk inside, the library itself looks like nothing at all, all white walls and floors, but if you make your way up the stairs and into the reading room, you’ll find yourself in the middle of a Gothic chapel:
Apparently the architect wanted to erect a cathedral to knowledge or something like that, but his lofty ideals were cut down by the university, who I can only guess said something along the lines of “That’s great, but we only have the budget for one room”. It’s a really cool room, although I do wish they’d have sprung for stained glass to complete the look. It’s a real reading room, too, full of students doing their reading or working on their papers.
On the way out we glanced at the big fountain in campus, only to notice that you can see the enormous Mount Rainier in the distance, right behind it, wearing a white cloud like a beret. It is so far away that it really must be gigantic to be seen like that all the way from here.
From there we went over to University Way, the main street of the neighborhood, also busy with students going to and fro. Except for a couple of second-hand bookstores, this was once again occupied almost exclusively by restaurants (and when it comes to bookstores, Powell’s and Elliott Bay have left us with impossibly high standards). I settled for Thai Tom, a very casual Thai place recommended by my guide. I got sat down at the counter, ordered off a wooden tablet, and had a delicious Panaang curry in front of me all in five minutes flat. I did worry a little when they said I could only pay in cash, but luckily I had just enough (only place so far that didn’t take cards) and the meal was good, if rushed. After so many sandwiches and fish & chips, the bowl of plain white rice felt like a delicacy.
From there I made a quick run into The Scarecrow, a huge video store like in the old days, thinking I might find a good bargain or two in Blu-Rays (DVDs are region-locked, but I think BRs are not). This turned out to be a wash: it is in fact a rental store! For that it’s awesome, two full floors filled to the brim with thousands of DVDs, BRs and even VHS, but for sales they only had one shelf with the worst movies you’ve ever seen.
So that was it for our foray up north, at least until we go Really Up North tomorrow. It was early in the afternoon still, so we hopped on the bus -spending our last physical dollars- to go back to the apartment and rest our feet. Sitting on a bus for three hours sounds pretty good right now!
We made one last foray out to do some last minute shopping (or window shopping, because everything is so crazy expensive here: a Zara sweater that goes for €25 in Spain costs 45$ here!!) that turned into last minute sightseeing when we made a detour to look at the Amazon Spheres, two futuristic glass domes that work as a sort of urban greenhouse that serves as a working space for Amazon employees. I believe they are open to visitors on certain days, but either way it was past closing time so we just gawked at the sci-fi looking structure from the outside.
And that’s it for my second visit to Seattle! Like with Portland, even though I’d already been here for a very brief visit, I feel like I leave with a much deeper understanding of the city and its character -as deep as you can get in a few days anyway. I’ve seen museums, visited various neighborhoods, attended a musical, I’ve done shopping, went to the gardens, took a day trip… Seattle definitely feels much more like a big city than Portland, while still retaining a unique character that I can now recognize informs the Pacific Northwest as a whole and which sets it apart from other major cities in the US.
Tomorrow we’re off to Vancouver! I have never been to Vancouver before, so from here on out it’s all uncharted territory for me!
This Is A Lake 