Seattle, USA: savouring a city's flavours
I wondered what Microsoft's looked like. Before visiting Seattle, I expected three coordinates to triangulate my impression of the place: music, nature and the techno-genius firms that fuel (in a green way) the city's futuristic aura. As it turned out, my experience hinged more on food and art: chocolate, wine, cheese and all manner of Asian delicacies, both culinary and artistic.
Not that Seattle's music died with Kurt Cobain. The jazz clubs in Pioneer Square still bump and grind into the night, and the Experience Music Project, housed in a curvaceous silver mountain range of a building designed by Frank Gehry – it looks like a toaster mated to a jet engine – reaffirms the experimental spirit of that local hero Jimi Hendrix through its cutting-edge music and interactive exhibitions. The latest of the latter opens in September – Nirvana: Taking Punk to the Masses, a show celebrating the 20-year anniversary of Cobain and the boys' ground-breaking album Nevermind.
Seattle's natural world is none too shabby, either. The ride into town from the airport, on the new Light Rail Link, shows off a panoply of green-and-blue, mountain-and-sea vistas.
(A rare nature sighting on the Link: three Seahawks – the human kind – sloping off the train, heads drooped in identical dejection so that the beaks of their stylised, totemic-hawk hats nearly touched their chests. That afternoon, their American football team, the Seattle Seahawks, had been thumped by the New York Giants, 41-7, in Seattle's beautiful new stadium, Quest Field. Injury and insult.)
I think my impression of the city hinged on food because I was perpetually hungry there. I blame it on the downtown's steep ascent from the shores of Puget Sound. I needed fuel to keep my calf and thigh muscles pumping.
When I told my friend Greg that I was arriving for a visit, he immediately emailed: "The Tamarind Tree. Best Vietnamese food in town." Greg is a professor at Evergreen, an acclaimed progressive-liberal arts college in Olympia, Washington State's capital. He chooses to live an hour away in Seattle, however, because it's cooler. In the figurative sense.
Washington South Sound Wineries - News
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A one-stop, wine country tour guide for Washington wineries in the Puget Sound wine region, including Seattle area wineries. Use restaurants, lodging and Calendar ...
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