UPDATE: I’ve added some photos from Seattle, the Cascades, Vancouver, and Portland to my gallery.

I’ve been in the Pacific Northwest for a week now, with Seattle as my base. So far it has been mostly a tourist trip, but I should start by noting that I’ll be giving a talk ‘Grounding Modality’ at Reed College, Portland on Friday 7th October, 4.15pm. The talk will take place in the auditorium of the Psychology building, so if you happen to be around, be there!

Seattle

The weather here in Seattle and surrounding areas has not been quite ideal, it’s rainy and grey most of the time, but there have been a couple of brief periods of decent weather. One of them luckily on Sunday, when I went to the Cascades Range for some hiking and trail running with my host, Elizabeth. We went to the Glacier Peak Wilderness in North Cascades and climbed to the top of the Spider Glacier via Spider Meadow. The first 8k to the Spider Meadow are on a lovely forest trail with a steady incline of maybe 500m. We ran to the Spider Meadow and then took it easier on the last steep bit up to Spider Glacier, reaching an altitude of 2200m (started from below 900m). The original idea was to go over to the next valley and take a different route back, but the high level route was nowhere to be found and we didn’t fancy the rather dangerous looking cliff face. Since the weather started to turn as well, we simply ran back the same way we came and got to the car just before it started pouring. A great day out nevertheless, covering a total distance of about 33km with some 1500m height gain. The only downside is that I had a bit of a sore throat to begin with (flying often does this to me, the planes are full of bugs) and now I’m faced with an irritating flu, with less than two weeks to go before the Amsterdam marathon. Well, I should be fine by then.

Elizabeth on the trail to Spider Glacier

As to tourism in Seattle itself, I’ve seen the Space Needle of course, although haven’t gone up there at least yet ($18 seems a bit excessive), and I’ve got a decent idea of the various districts and their offerings. It seems like a nice city, with some good (vegan) restaurants and nice bars, although can’t compete with NYC of course! Among other things, I’ve had vegan cupcakes at the brand new Bouteloua Bakery, an excellent spicy eggplant stirfry at In the Bowl (a vegan thai restaurant with a VERY long menu), and sampled some beers at Bottleworks — a bottle shop and tiny pub with nine rotating taps.

Vegan cupcakes at Bouteloua Bakery

Yesterday we drove to Vancouver, BC with Elizabeth. It’s a city I’ve heard much about, and I was looking forward to checking it out. It’s a mere 2,5h drive from Seattle, although depending a bit on customs and immigration (they checked our car on the way back, but it didn’t take too long). Vancouver lived up to its reputation, although it was a bit rainy, so no amazing photography opportunities. The city is an interesting mixture of different kinds of architecture and people. You can find heroin addicts ‘actively dying of AIDS’ (as Elizabeth put it), fancy upscale restaurants with a view of shiny skyscrapers, and alternative hippie joints — all virtually in the same block. We had a great meal at Bandidas, a taqueria with a nice alternative style. It’s vegetarian, but everything is available as vegan too. I highly recommend the Leona Gayle burrito, which comes with delicious smoky chipotle tofu, pinto beans, and Daiya vegan cheese (if you go for the vegan option). I also managed to ckech out what must be one of the best joints for beer in Vancouver, namely Alibi Room, which features 50 taps of mostly local brews (but international stuff too). I think they had one or two casks as well. Be sure to ask for a flight/taster — it’s not mentioned on the menu, but for 11 Canadian dollars you get a taster of any four beers on tap. I went full on with just stouts and porters! Steamworks Espresso Stout deserves a special mention: I’ve recently taken to good espressos and this 9% ABV beer combines some great local coffee flavour with an excellent stout base. I’ve had a few other similar stouts, but this has by far the richest coffee flavour to it. Sadly it’s seasonal and no longer brewed (or bottled), but it was still available at Alibi.

Alibi Room Stout & Porter Flight

Well, there you go. Mostly food and beer then, with a little bit of tourism and trail running thrown in. I could get used to that! This weekend will see some philosophy as well of course, and I’m looking forward to checking out Portland, which appears to have an excellent selection of vegan restaurants and micro breweries!