The bluest skies you'll ever see are in...

Seattle. And the hills the greenest green in Seattle. Like a beautiful child, growing up, free an' wild. Full of hopes and full of fears, full of laughter, full of tears, full of dreams to last the years, in Seattle...in Seattle...(lyrics courtesy of God and Perry Como)

I'd originally planned four more Seattle posts: Seattle at night; Seattle art; Eating in Seattle; and Seattle and Victoria. Too much? Then you might be glad that as much as I'd love to go back, I've got other things on my mind these days. And however many images I show, I think the only way to get a true feel for this gorgeous city would be to go there and walk around in it, which I hope you all do one day. I know that before I went I looked through a lot of guidebooks and saw a lot of photos, but I still didn't really know what to expect, except maybe a lot of grungy hipsters, militant vegans or nerdy Rick Steves types. Maybe even a Frasier or Niles. Anywhoo, Seattle, a synopsis:

I found this and several more in a city bus, in some of the spaces usually reserved for advertisements. A pretty good idea, I thought. I'd much rather read a poem than an ad trying to sell me something.

An actual poet...Some interesting grafitti...The Seattle Art Museum or the SAM... This car thing is a depiction of an accident, and one of the few works of art I was able to photograph.

And this...

is the other one. Sorry. I was really kicking myself for picking this, this kitschy painting (which I think was once owned by Elvis) out of all the amazing works in the SAM to photograph before the guards marked me as a major camera risk. Oh well, it is pretty cool actually. It's called Big Blonde in the Woods. Another work of art which make me think, hey, if this can make it into a major city museum, then darn it...!

This... is a wall covered in gum, in case you can't tell. Care to guess how many pieces of gum are stuck there?

Wouldn't you love to eat here?...(well, maybe not after that wall)...This place, Cowgirls Inc. American Saloon...is the only dance club L. and I were able to find, a bar unlike any place we've ever been to before. So we were at first pretty intimidated (and almost went to see a movie instead) with the patrons being ninety percent male and the four (how can we compete with these) gorgeous women dancing on the counter. Not to mention the huge and scary bouncers they had everywhere. But after a beer, and a fun but very short ride on the bull... we figured, oh, what the heck, and got on the dance floor. It was then we realized we'd been afraid of nothing because of course, with so many men around us, we had no shortage of dance partners.

This... is the metro bus tunnel, which came as a total surprise to us. We were expecting trains, the usual thing one finds in an underground metro tunnel.

And this...is one of our breakfasts (fascinating, huh?) a selection of Pike Place Market goodies: Beecher's Flagship cheese and macaroni and cheese, a baguet, candied smoked salmon, a raspberry cheesecake, and coffees. There were grapes too but we forgot to put them in the picture. I must say the food everywhere we went was excellent. In fact one of our most memorable meals was in this bar called Curves during happy hour. Down here four dollar happy hour food usually means something overly salted and greasy. Up there it's the best oyster stew I've ever had.

And these Pike Place pooches... were providing their owner with easy money, perhaps paying for their own vet bills.

L. and I were really impressed by how clean Seattle was. If you've ever been to San Francisco you'd understand why this would impress us so much. As L. said, even the dirt looked clean. Not a stray weed in the entire city. And the water...!Looking over a pier in San Francisco one would never be able to see all the way down, even in water this shallow. All you'd see is an impenetrable layer of grayish green murkiness.

We were also impressed by how safe the city felt. Maybe this isn't really so, but to see obviously non homeless people sleeping on city benches at night, as if taking cat naps after one too many drinks with buddies downtown, something that would never happen in our part of the world, said a lot to us about this city.

Bald eagle we saw en route to Victoria B. C. Imagine how long it took to build that nest. I took over two dozen photographs in pretty Victoria. Like this one... But, this... is the only one I found interesting mainly because I really wanted to buy every single pair of shoes I saw in this window.

OK...I once vowed I'd never show a photograph of myself on this blog. But I'll show this one, a photograph I inadvertently took of myself, because of the contentment on my face. (And because it's too grainy to make out my flaws!) Seattle was a hard city to leave. L. at the airport felt her legs nearly fail her as we rushed to catch our plane, as if her body was screaming to her, don't leave! You've been so happy here! Aaaah, Seattle...