Tacoma, WA

As you've probably read in earlier posts, I recently returned from my vacation to Tacoma, WA. If you aren't familiar with the name, it's a city south of Seattle and north of Olympia and on the southern coast of Puget Sound, which is kind of a bay/lake/other-body-of-water-for-which-I-don't-know-the name of the Pacific Ocean in Washington's western handle.

So, I've been terrified of plane travel since the last time I was on a plane, which was five years ago, for basically no good reason except paranoia. Well, that led me to be a little wary of boarding a plane by myself for the first time. I mean, there are too many signs to get lost, but I was still worried that TSA was going to find something wrong with my bag or me (which they did in the Albuquerque scan-through... for some reason).

While it was a little freaky in the pressurized cabin and the super-loud whirring and force of takeoff and the complete weightlessness and tilt of the plane - it was actually pretty cool. I watched out the window the whole time from Albuquerque to Phoenix because I got so entranced by the experience.

Some pictures from the flight from Phoenix to Seattle:

 This was taken in the Phoenix airport. If you look closely at the carpet pattern, it looks like planes flying into a whirlpool-/tornado-/hurricane-type thing. Thanks for offending every plane that got lost in the air, Phoenix. Or maybe it's a possible historical fact: this is what happened to Malaysian flight 370 and Amelia Earhart.

 I can never understand why all the fields are round. Crop circles, I guess, but why?

 Plane view of Mount Rainier

If this is how tiny the Space Needle (center) looks from a plane, how can anyone see it from space? (Naw, it totally wasn't called the Space Needle because it could be seen from space. --Okay, good to know I was lied to.)
 

It was a little confusing for me to find my grandparents and for my grandparents to find me, but I recognized my grandpa's huge, charcoal-gray Toyota Tundra pretty easily.

Even though my grandparents live in a condominium, it feels a lot like a hotel, with the cushy bed with white sheets, perfect view of the Sound, cable in the room, white towels, etc.

Here's the rest of the apartment:

dining room and balcony

kitchen

bottom half of the stairs

living room

big flat-screen TV with xfinity

Patch looking off the balcony

balcony-and-Sound selfie

My grandma and I walked around the area, just so I could know where everything was.

Mt. Rainier in the far distance - which I dubbed Cloud Mountain

There's a park a few blocks up the street that is the most beautiful and green park I've been to.

Since the main reason for my vacation was to visit colleges in the area, I went to tour the University of Puget Sound in Tacoma the day after I arrived. It looks eerily like Academy...

 Friday was our Seattle day. My grandma is actually my step-grandma, so she has grandkids I've never met, and I got to meet her baby grandson (Adio?), who accompanied us everywhere that day.

Seattle University:

Adio wanted to walk up every staircase we found

University of Washington (I didn't have a scheduled tour; we just walked around):

this dog was really having fun with the sprinkler

the stairs in the library

Gothic-cathedral library

Seattle Pacific University (where two of my aunts went):

the stairs in the library

Pike Place Market:

trying to get Adio's attention for a picture

oh, that infamous pig

guy painted like a statue, but I saw him lift his drink (parched, are ya?)

we saw a guy juggling knives

Other city shots:

The next day my grandpa took us out to Puget Sound, specifically Schuster Parkway, where there was a dock and a little bit of beach next to a grassy area. A lot of people were walking there and enjoying the morning.

this lady's dog loved swimming in the shallows

some stand-up paddleboaters and a flock of Canada geese

Then we found a place where we could drive Go-Karts, and my grandma didn't want to do it, so I ended up being the only one.

When we finally got back home, all I wanted to do was walk over to Thriftway, which is a little grocery store a block from my grandparents' apartment that I first visited when I was ten, when we last visited Tacoma.

the western view from the apartment, as I was climbing the stairs

Sunday morning I was feeling pretty chill, because I don't often get to enjoy cable television.

Patch and I watched a lot of NatGeoWild

But my grandparents wanted to take me to the Tacoma Narrows Bridge, and even though we drove there, the walk to and along the bridge was long. (Yeah, and I didn't bring any good shoes for all the walking I ended up doing in the city.) First, we passed through a war memorial park, then we crossed the street to the bridge.

a bell saved from a Tacoma ship that beached during World War II

I thought it was weird for the benches to have little areas like this...

Again, once we got home, all I wanted to do was get out of the apartment and walk around, and I went over to the used bookstore King's Books that we first found when I last visited.

on the walk to the bookstore

Monday was my last day, and it started off with a visit to Pacific Lutheran University, which was surprisingly not as religiously-oriented as I would've thought.

the wall where visiting students write their names and where they're from

the auditorium

our little tour group

the concert hall

outside of the science building

Grandma and I walked to the Museum of Glass (it was a long walk) and looked at the exhibits, because there were some specially created pieces at Puget Sound and SeattleU, and also we drove by the museum on our way anywhere if we were headed to I-5.

walking to the museum

the pieces displayed on the bridge to the museum over the interstate

The coolest part was an exhibit with recycled neon letters from signs, that were lit with battery packs and strung with rope and hanging on random nails on the wall. A sign in the room said that it was interactive, and visitors could take letters to create words, or carry around or wear letters of their choice. Once people started spelling out their names and taking pictures, my grandma convinced me to do it.

Another cool thing about the museum was their Hot Shop, where an audience could see into a lower art room where specially-invited local artists would blow glass from scratch, and we got to see the entire process, with molten glass the consistency of honey on a long iron rod, to shaping it on a table and with large spoon-like tools, to spooling contrasting-color glass around it to make stripes.

So, it was nice to get away for a week, get over some fears, explore the city, and, most of all, visit my favorite city so far in the United States.

goodbye, Cloud Mountain

oh, the Rio Grande...