Having visited Seattle quite a number of times during my years with an international airline, I have seen the usual tourist attractions visitors look for in the city.
The Space Needle is the city’s iconic landmark which is actually an observation tower built for the 1962 World’s Fair. Pike Place Market is a favorite locale of several Hollywood movies, the most popular of which was Sleepless in Seattle.
Woodland Park brings out the youth in everyone. The zoo occupies half of this 36-hectare property, while the other half has a picnic area, trails, a miniature golf range, ball fields, lawn bowling and a bike course.
The Boeing Factory in Everett, a city next to Seattle, interests those who work for or just plain fancy the airline industry. And, some tourists drive several hours just to be awed by the majestic Mt. Rainier, Washington state’s highest mountain, while some spend long hours downtown, looking for the hospital used as setting for TV’s popular soap, Grey’s Anatomy.
All these destinations have been part of my previous visits to this bustling city in northwestern USA.
My daughter and her family has set up residence in Redmond, a suburb of Seattle, which has given me another reason to ensure a yearly visit to this part of the US continent
During my latest visit a couple of weeks ago, I told my daughter that I wanted to see something new that the area has to offer, something different, something that would give another face to Seattle and its suburbs.
She drove me 15 minutes away from her residence, to a town called Woodinville, to spend time in Washington state’s oldest and biggest winery, the Chateau Ste. Michelle, owned by a company called Altria, which was once popularly known as Philip Morris. The winery produces two million cases of Chardonnay, Cabernet, Merlot and Riesling yearly, and is, in fact, the world’s leading producer of Riesling wine.
As we drove inside the Chateau premises, I could immediately see vineyards on both sides of the road, and a male employee directing traffic to the huge parking lot. Visitors, upon disembarking from their vehicles, were allowed to go near the vineyards and take pictures. Naturally, I didn’t want to be left out, so I did my share of photo ops.
A short walk from the parking lot, going through rows of evergreens and other lush foliage, brought us to the main feature of the winery grounds, the Chateau, a typical European-designed structure painted with the dominant colors of the Tuscan region, with fresh blooms of varying attractive colors serving as accent to the otherwise monochrome building. The Chateau’s interiors have the pleasant Old World charm that is characteristic of similar structures in Europe.
Right next to the Chateau is the Gift Shop which, during our visit, was teeming with customers, mostly wine lovers who practically emptied the shelves of the products on display, as they availed of the special prices for the bundled set of wine, crackers, cheese and tapas. My daughter and I couldn’t resist the attractive prices, so we found ourselves taking a table outside the Gift Shop, to feast on the set of goodies we bought.
On the winery grounds is an amphitheater used for outdoor concerts during summer. When we were there, a band was rehearsing for the scheduled evening concert featuring recording artist, Ray LaMontagne. We could have stayed on to watch it but we had already made plans for the evening.
As we readied ourselves for the trip back home, I learned that the particular area of Woodinville, where all these vineyards are located (there are other smaller wineries aside from the Chateau Ste. Michelle), has the same climate, terrain and soil as those of the wine regions of France. This explains why the wines produced by Chateau Ste. Michelle are of the same high quality as their French counterparts.
As we drove back home, my daughter showed me something I haven’t seen in any other part of the world, as if in answer to my quest for new things in the Seattle area. It was a three-wheel motorcycle that runs at a top speed of 130 mph and is called a Slingshot (the photo I took is on this page). Costing approximately $20000.00, it can seat two passengers and is sometimes called a Reverse Trike because two wheels are in front and one wheel is behind. Introduced only last year, it is now gaining popularity among fun-loving individuals.
I’m sure that if I had stayed longer in Seattle, I would have discovered more of the new things it has to offer. Unfortunately, I had to fly off to another country for an all-important family affair. But I was happy to have discovered another face of Seattle.
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YOUR FRIDAY CHUCKLE
A man walks into a bar and says, “Give me a beer before the problem starts!” He drinks the beer and then orders another, saying “Give me a beer before the problem starts!” The bartender looks confused. This goes on for a while, and after the fifth beer the bartender is totally confused and asks the man “When are you going to pay for these beers?” The man answers, “Now the problem starts!”