Flawless Plans: Seattle! And also Tacoma.

Seattle is awesome. I thought I liked Spokane, but Seattle is seriously great. We arrived in late afternoon. The kids woke up in really good moods and we found a parking space near the Space Needle. We bought tickets and zipped right in. Bear's favorite part was the very fast elevator ride. And then afterwards, pointing to pictures of the Space Needle and saying, "I went up there."

Traveler Review: The playground by the base of the Space Needle may be the best I have ever seen. Besides the stories high climbing structure, there was also a kid-powered merry-go-round thing, some interesting astroturf hills, and lots of musical instruments. Plus, a kid could learn five languages playing there.

We met our friends Teri and Shelby for dinner. The restaurant experience was a bit of a disaster, but seeing them was great. I met Teri in medical school which was a strange time for me; sometimes those feelings complicate my relationships with people I met there, but Teri is just pure joy. Though we did spend some time noting the contrasts in our lives, that gulf that sometimes exists between parenting and non-parenting adults was not yawning open the way it sometimes can.

The next day we went to Pike's Place Market and wandered around eating delicious things every several feet. It was very crowded and there were lots of stairs - luckily we had decided to wear both the kids - me with Pax in the Ergo, and Benjamin with Bear in the Mei Tai. He's almost too big for it, but it still sort of works and it was very nice to not have to worry about him darting off in the crowd.

There were flowers and produce and pastries and smoothies. We bought peaches that tasted like sweet heaven and got Pax some lambskin booties. I picked up some books for me and Bear at the used bookstore - which was quiet and dusty and smelled like books and had everything by John Green and reminded me yet again that I am a reader and that there is a while world of books waiting for me if I just stop scrolling through buzzfeed articles and actually read.

The whole market was noisy and crowded and colorful in a way that was energizing rather than overstimulating. The plentiful espresso helped, I'm sure.

After the market we visited the Utilikilt store briefly and then shared the most perfect fish sandwich in a cozy Irish pub. Walking through the downtown we were approached by a one-legged Buddhist monk who performed a peace blessing over our family and then requested a $40 donation. We had $2 on us and so we cut over a block and a half to the ATM and got some money and returned to him. Even knowing we had been had, we were grinning the whole time, hiking through the sunlight, our kids strapped to our backs.

We returned to the RV and continued on to Tacoma while the kids slept. They both woke up just as we arrived at the glass museum. We went inside and watched glasswork being done in the shop and then went through the galleries a bit faster than perhaps the adults would have chosen to if left to our own devices.

Next we took in the model trains at the State of Washington Museum across the bridge.

On our way to dinner we ducked into a junk store full of things like bins of laser-cut lexan circles and other bins labeled "misc tubes - $2." If we were not currently nomads, I would have gone crazy in there. Bear and I would have been set for building and art projects for the whole summer.

We finished the day at Indochine, a restaurant that Benjamin remembered from a previous trip to Tacoma. It was a lovely meal with some pot-stickers that were out of this world. My enjoyment of the experience may have been more complete if I were wearing something other than a spit-up stained T-shirt, or if I did not have to repeatedly remind my three-year-old that it is not appropriate to chant "poopy butts, poopy butts," over and over in a nice restaurant.

All in all, it was a great couple of days in Seattle and Tacoma.