Vacating

[elfs]

Manressa Castle Sitting Room

Omaha and I are vacating. We have momentarily abandoned the children to the house and Lisakit's care while we retreated to Port Townsend and two nights at Manresa Castle, a 19th Century mansion that has been renovated into a hotel. It has few modern amenities-- no swimming pool or exercise room, a tiny bar and a small restaurant are it. The rooms are small and have baseboard heat, the beds tall and hard, the bathrooms tiled in that 19th-century sterile way popularized at the Battle Creek Sanitarium. But it's beautiful here, with all the wood and silk and velvet, the hardwood floors and oriental rugs, ceramic cats and coats of arms.

We arrived in Port Townsend, a lovely little lumber, fishing, and shipping town out on the Washington State peninsula, It's main attraction is that it sticks out in the sound and there's water on three sides, so one side belongs to industry, one to the tourist industry, and one used to belong to a military installation in case this far end of the nation was ever invaded by, well, Canada I guess. Despite being of "immense military and strategic value" and having upwards of 12 batteries of artillery installed, the base never fired a shot in anger, and was used in WWII mostly as a training base for soldiers heading into Pacific land battles.

Omaha and I dined at the Belmont, a fairly nice restaurant that specialized in riching up the best salmon the state could provide. It was delicious, but in that heavy sauces and flavorings way one normally only reads about. Our waitress's name was "Misuko." And she looked like a Misuko, if shorter than I imagined.

We went back to the hotel. It was snowing. We went to the bar and wrote. Well, Omaha wrote. I fumbled around for 2000 words and then gave up, realizing the story wasn't going anywhere.

Jefferson County Courthouse

Port Townsend tries to be as "Victorian" as it can, revelling in its 1890-1910 period, and the buildings are all that beautiful and well-maintained as can be. We parked at the far end and walked up the hill to visit the courthouse and the post office, both of which are over a century old and look it.

We descended into town and went to Undertown Coffee, where we met the very energetic ShunraCat and her husband and had a lovely conversation that went on for two hours. It was good to see her in person, as we'd been tweeting at each other for as long as I can remember. They were such lovely people! And they recommended the Owl Sprit, a lovely little cafe up an alleyway that had the most amazing mini burgers-- I had one with tatziki and one with bacon, and they were both delicious. I have to try that at home. I bet the kids would eat them up. They also had a decent iced tea, and even some good hummous.

Omaha and I continued our walk, enjoying the ambience and each other's company. It's barely 4C out in the daytime, but we still stopped for ice cream, bought some knicknacks, and stopped by the tea shoppe and the candle shoppe. There were a lot of other tourists on the road.

The sun went down early. By 5pm it was time to head back to the hotel.

Comments

Thanks for your kind words

[shunra.livejournal.com]

Meeting the two of you was a very healing heart-balm in what have been, for me, a couple of rather challenging weeks.

Add to your list of coupledom superpowers: heartbalming.

Daniel tells me that we did, in fact, lapse into AmericanJewish speech patterns. Oops.

As to food places... there's some really good food to be had in PT. Can you figure out how to try out both Fountain Cafe & Sweet Laurette's for lunchiness, and 1012 as well as Lehani's for coffee... and Silverwater and Finn's for dinner (although you could safely reverse the lunch & dinner recommendations). Oh, and there's always T's... ...and Dos Okies, which is more of a meat-grill-type place, but is so (apparently) good that I've seen prose-based humans break into poetry to describe it. (Full disclosure: I don't do meat-grill-type food, and haven't eaten there yet. I have at least one friend who considers that a personality flaw.)

Shorter exuberance: good to have met.