I didn’t mean for my travels to be so on-trend, but when I read about the concept of “coolcation” as my partner and I were en route to Seattle, I pointed to the article and said, “Ohmigod, this is what we’re doing!” A coolcation is a trip to any cooler climate during the summer. It’s a response to global warming and the misery of crowded beaches in summer, vs. the joys of mountain strolls and Northern city supping. Sure, it’s summer; it’ll still be warm, but not too warm!
We had just spent a desperately hot two weeks at Fresno State University where I was teaching a writing workshop. It was 117F degrees some days in Fresno and we were looking forward to cooling off in Seattle. I was scheduled to give a reading at Hugo House, a gorgeous Seattle writing center. As soon as we realized we were taking a coolcation by heading north, we leaned into the concept. We’d spend time by the sea; we’d ride the ferry; we’d drink our coffee iced!
With the planet warming, even heading North is no guarantee of cool, and it turned out Seattle was having its own heat wave when we visited, causing temps to climb just above 90F. Sweltering for locals, but still soothing to us, considering where we just came from. It was still a coolcation indeed. Upon arrival, we headed straight to the Honey Hole – no, it’s not a stripper bar; it just sounds like one. It’s a sandwich shop, and in my memory of my last Seattle visit, the Emilio Pestovez was the finest sandwich I’d ever tasted. My anticipation outclassed the result. We had a good meal there, though, and the cauliflower bites were great. Salt and Straw ice-cream across the street, however, was still pretty dang special. We had pear and blue cheese, marionberry habanero, and of course, old standards like coffee crunch and mint chip.
Good eating abounds and Seattle is a big west coast cosmopolitan city, so the cuisine is wildly multi-cultural, coffee-focused, and queerly-vegan-inspired. All of my favorite things. While picking up an adaptogenic iced coffee one morning at Wunderground, my partner heard a well-suited businessman exclaim with a hand flourish that he wanted “just a splash of half and half!” This is a perfect Seattle snapshot:, gay, eccentric, professional, and caffeinated. Wunderground’s site even offers a guide to medicinal mushrooms if you’re not up on the trend. And while Seattle offers coffee without mushrooms in it, “adaptogenic” is certainly all the rage. I had a “healing chai” from Plantiful that was also adaptogenic and wow, I think I felt… adapted (though maybe my calm came from a few days off in a cooler climate).
The Capitol Hill neighborhood is about as queer and tasty as it can get. Honey Hole is joined by plant-based Life on Mars for fab vegan food along with gay bars, rainbow-painted crosswalks and bars, and music venues aplenty. I love the cedar-shelved Elliott Bay Book Company too. It’s popular and enormous, with a healthy LGBT section. I had a good crowd when they hosted me for a reading from my first essay collection that came out in 2019. When it comes to queer and queer friendly bars, Chicago is choc-full. A quick look at The Stranger – Seattle’s free weekly paper – will give a visitor all of the info on karaoke nights, drags shows and more. I want to give respect to the OG contributions to queer community — The Wild Rose holds the title of oldest lesbian bar in the nation, turning forty this year. Still serving old-school fabulousness with pool tables and singer-songwriter showcases.
During this stay, we used Lyft to get around and the majority of our drivers were Ethiopian or Eritrean, so of course I wanted food recommendations. Zema served us well with the vegetarian platter on delicious injera bread, and though we ate early, the place is often packed with Ethiopian immigrants for DJ and live music at night, according to the driver that recommended it. Zema is just around the corner from the flagship REI store which is truly impressive with an indoor climbing wall and a mountain biking track that encircles the three story store. My sweetie was overwhelmed, calling it Whole Foods for outdoors enthusiasts. Truly, visiting this particular store makes it clear you’re participating in a lifestyle, not just buying a water-proof functional purse in a cool color like I did. I’m a fashion-is-equal-to-function kind of lesbian, to be sure.
I tend to associate cheese curds with Wisconsin, but Beechers Cheese has them, so we ate them. Not as good as their macaroni and cheese at Pike Place Market, the enormous open-air market that’s part history, part performance (fish tossing, anyone?), and all delicious. Everyone tells visitors to go to Pike Place Market, but be sure to pick a segment. And then choose again if you happen to be in a particularly crowded area. The market is huge and so are the crowds. That macaroni and cheese was so enticingly creamy, we ate it twice during our three day visit. We also tried some root beer fudge – a whim I don’t recommend from Gosanko Chocolate. Essence of root beer contaminated the inside of my face mask when I walked into the crowd after eating just a tiny morsel!
One of my favorite Seattle attractions is the free Ballard Locks and Fish Ladder. For those who don’t live near water, it offers a fascinating explanation of how boats are able to change elevation using a watertight basin. If you visit during the summer, you can take a peek through a viewing window and get an ideal look at salmon using a fish ladder to swim upstream. Make sure you set aside plenty of time to hit this attraction, since Ballard is in the north part of Seattle-proper.
Seattle Center is a gorgeous little park surrounded by a sculpture garden, the Chihuly Glass Museum and Garden and of course, the Space Needle. The Chihuly Museum opened in 2012, and I was dying to see it. Dale Chihuly is a Tacoma native, so I’ve seen some of his exhibits just south of Seattle. My partner first balked at the steep price of the museum – and for just one artist – but after the hour and a half we spent there, we felt gratified despite the expense. The glass sculptures were impressive and beautiful – not just stained glass, but monuments to light and movement. The garden is really a gem with cool, shaded crannies and music wafting in from the other exhibits. Films and demonstrations also show more about the artist’s process, and how glass is fired.
We had lunch that day at vegan Pho Viet Anh. The tofu bahn mi and salad rolls were delightful. Another lunch (oh, how the meals ran together…) took us to Pride India Grocery for some of the best dosas we’d ever had. (I’ve written about dosas during my travels before – in Hawaii, for instance, and Chicago.) It’s an Indian grocery store with a little food stand in the back. We got the traditional potato, and the cheese and chili, along with some soup that was so spicy our baby-mouths couldn’t eat it. Worth the trip for take-out, so we could weep privately from spice and joy in our hotel room.
During this trip, we stayed at Even Hotel, which is walking distance to the dosas, the REI and more. It’s a hotel inside a hotel situation – on one side it’s Staybridge Suites and on the other side it’s Even. The hotel aesthetic is light and airy and the gimmick is fitness and clever sayings. “Good night, great morning” was actually emblazoned on the wall above our beds. (Cue eye-roll.) And instead of a chair to sit and put on one’s shoes, there was a fitness ball and space to roll out the yoga mat and props they provided. It was priced similarly to queer-friendly luxury brand, Kimpton, and I wondered why I wasn’t staying there sipping the nightly glass of wine they offer in the fancy lobby rather than admiring the big sleek gym visible on the first floor each time I exited. Ah well, next time.
Because we were on a coolcation, we also spent a few hours out on the water, watching the sea and mountains in the beautiful breeze. Washington State Ferries is the largest operating public ferries system in the U.S. and the prices are pretty reasonable if you’re a tourist looking for a sea cruise. (Prices vary for individuals and vehicles, to a wide range of destinations.) We rode from Seattle to Bremerton and back on the Walla Walla. It’s pretty darned charming for public transportation. You can buy bad coffee and snacks on board, and partially solved puzzles are left on random tabletops for passengers to assemble during the journey. It was a clear sunny day, but I also imagined the romance of traveling on a blustery sea. Though we didn’t explore Bremerton, approaching Seattle by sea on our return seemed to put city life in perspective. Seattle really is perched on the edge of a great wilderness in a few directions.
During our trip, my sweetie kept comparing Seattle to Berlin – that’s how queer it felt being there, and how cosmopolitan. Drinks were mixed to perfection, big city wows were everywhere, and everything we did and saw – even as tourists – felt queer friendly. We look forward to returning. Though we weren’t initially planning a coolcation, I think we accomplished one. Seattle is very cool, in more ways than one.
Photos courtesy of Kimberly Dark.
