Back over Christmas, I talked a bit with my sister, Becky, who lives about an hour north of Seattle. I really wanted to visit her there, but the logistics were going to be hard to figure out given all the legalities and timing issues related to the divorce stuff. The plan was originally for the divorce to be finalized by the end of February, but it dragged on and on (and the paperwork STILL hasn’t been filed!), and so I waited to book my tickets until after I had concrete dates to work with. That ended up being a five-day brief trip in mid-June – flying up on a Tuesday and home the next Sunday.
Now of course I woke up with a cold the day I was set to fly. I masked up for the trip – no one come at me for traveling while sick, it’s not like the airline was going to let me change my tickets last minute so you can blame capitalism instead – and felt dead on my feet by the time I got through two flights and a train ride up to my sister and brother-in-law’s part of the world. For the first couple days, we mostly relaxed at their house, which overlooks Puget Sound from the upstairs balcony. Took slow walks in the neighborhood, hung out with the cats, drank coffee/tea on the deck, watched lots of Bake-Off reruns, etc.
On Thursday evening, Becky dressed up and we went out to do the photoshoot that we had originally discussed back at Christmas. I’d wanted to visit her because I love this part of the world and wanted to see where she lived, and she’d asked me if I could do a photoshoot for her in some of her dancing costumes. Over about 1.5 hours as the light slowly grew more golden, we visited four locations – mostly on her property but some in the neighborhood – and she went through three outfits with various props (accessories? stuff like veils and fans and finger cymbals) as I took photos.
Fun fact about photoshoots: You take a LOT more photos than you end up with. This was especially the case here, because a lot of these were in-motion photos, so the camera would just click away while Becky twirled and tossed fans and veils around. I had to laugh at the number of photos that I ended up with – more than 1300! That dropped to under 800 by the time I deleted the obviously-bad shots, and by the time Becky glanced through the remaining, we’d culled the list down to 100. From those, she chose her favorite 20 to have edited, and I snuck a handful of others to play with. So many of the photos came out so well! This was a delightful photoshoot to do, with gorgeous lighting and really fun shots. The area she lives in is beautiful, so to be able to use it as a background was just perfect. This is why I adore shooting outdoors!
Friday, Becky, Jeff (her husband), and I traveled down to Capitol Hill, which is the gay district of Seattle. We mostly just wandered, popping into Elliot Bay Book Company, half a dozen thrift and vintage shops, a pop up artist gallery, a strange shop filled half with furniture and half with kitsch, and a boba tea shop for drinks before we headed over to Cal Anderson Park. There, it was time for rest, people-watching, photos, and eventually figuring out where we wanted to do dinner. We ended up at Annapurna Cafe, this delicious restaurant that served Indian, Nepalese, and Tibetan food. I have to be careful at these restaurants because I’m allergic to capsaicin, so I usually go with korma dishes as they’re pretty mild. The only kormas they had were seafood-based, so I went with the sea bass one, taking a bit of a risk because I had no idea if that would work. It did. It was delicious. Becky and Jeff loved their dishes, too, and we all highly recommend the restaurant if anyone is ever in that area!
On Saturday, we drove down to Fremont with the intention to visit Charlie’s Queer Books, and to see “the troll under the bridge.” As we got close to our destination, though, a bunch of roads were closed and the area was super busy. I looked it up, and we realized we’d come to Fremont just before the huge Solstice Parade. Whoops! We were definitely not going to find a parking spot anywhere, so we moved on to Ballard, which had been our second potential location for the day. In Ballard, we wandered again, stopping at a cool tattoo shop whose QR code on their placard had rickrolled me (ha!), a bunch more thrift/vintage shops (I was looking for something specific, but never found it sadly), a Kavu store, a vegan donut shop, and a somewhat disappointing bookshop.
A few hours of wandering later and the Solstice Parade was supposedly over, so we drove back to Fremont. Finding parking wasn’t much easier because the actual festivities continued on with whole streets shut down for vendors and performers, but we did find a spot! We went straight to Charlie’s, and good thing too because it was closing early for a special event only 15 mins after we arrived. I bought far too much there, but it was worth it! We then walked up this giant hill to see the troll.
Now, I was expecting this to be a statue of a troll roughly 3-4 feet tall. Something similar to what I saw all over the place in Norway in 2024. I was NOT expecting a multi-story high giant carved as if it was emerging from the underpass. It was really cool! I’m told there are several of these types of trolls in Seattle. And there was a place there were you could stamp a passport that (I believe?) was for different art installations in the city? That was cool.
[Note: The troll is holding a soccer ball because of the World Cup, that’s not normally there!]
After the troll, we went down and spend some time exploring the various vendors and such before heading back to the car and home again.
All in all, despite being sick and having limited days to explore, it was quite a nice trip. I love that part of the world, especially how cool it is compared to where I live, and being able to have the windows open, or sit on the deck while drinking coffee, etc. I loved hanging out with the cats (I miss my cats so much!!) and just relaxing with family. It was a short trip, but lovely.
The Zen Leaf 