Writing a Seattle recap is hard but happy work, and so I’m giving myself a bit of a breather with this post. It’s important to allow for such breaks when on a vacation far from home. I always try to pack a lot into a little time, wanting to make the most of such precious minutes and hoping not to regret anything, but time to relax and unwind, time to do nothing, is just as important as those moments of excitement and participation.
In fact, I’d wager that the in-between times, nestled between events and dinners and shows, are what make the most fondly-remembered moments that matter. Usually, they take place early on, just after I’ve checked into a hotel. The room is fresh and clean (and maybe there’s a bottle of local honey ale supplied by a hotel as fancy and generous as the Fairmont Olympic) and I stand before the window and let out a sigh of relief and appreciation.
Or maybe it’s a moment in a local store, where hand-made paper is rolled up into colorful bunches of pretty stand-up art. It doesn’t need to come in a frame or a museum, or hung upon a wall or on a pedestal. Sometimes it’s in the simplest of displays, the haphazard collections of whimsy, the groupings of pretty little things.
It can come in the tradition of a pre-dinner cocktail, tucked away in a private corner of a sleepy hotel, where stories far more exciting than yours are waiting to be told, or to unfold, in their own time, in their own way.
The magic of Seattle permeates everything, even these throw-away moments. Pockets of solitude within solitude. Alone but not lonely.
And tomorrow, the whales arrive…
