I was glad to have gone to the top of the Space Needle yesterday because today started cloudy and never cleared. It seemed a good day to do two of my favorite things in Seattle—go to art galleries and to the Pike Place markets to see the flowers.
Pioneer Square has one of my favorite galleries – The Glass House. It remains wonderful, but the area has become a ghost town. On a bright Saturday morning the gallery was empty. The proprietor told me it is because the area has been taken over by the homeless. It’s a problem that plagues the city (as well as many others). In Seattle Amazon and related tech companies pushed the price of housing to astronomical levels, forcing many people onto the streets. I visited a couple of other galleries but didn’t feel terribly safe in the area, so I headed to Pike Place.
I didn’t go to a tulip festival this year, but the market quenched my thirst. As always, the displays were gorgeous. I wish I could have preserved them in some way (other than photos). A huge bouquet ranged from $15-$20. The photos need to suffice.
From there I walked to Belltown, a nearby neighborhood, for lunch. Sitting outside, enjoying balmy weather, I ate some of the freshest, tastiest calamari at @Seatown. Just down the block is a gallery of Native American art, @SteinbrueckNativeGallery. The work exhibited there is museum quality, and I spent a long time looking at the art and then discussing it with Nathan Germain, a knowledgeable expert on Northwest Coast native art.
When I left the gallery about an hour later, a weather front had moved in. The wind had picked up, the temperature dropped and it was drizzling (i.e. typical Seattle weather). Time to return to the hotel.
In the evening, I went downtown to Benaroya Hall to hear a concert by the Seattle Jazz Repertory Orchestra.