Seattle! – Post 5 of our August Seattle trip

Our airbnb is excellent. It’s a walk-out basement apartment and I was worried it would be dark, dank and mildewy. But it’s not! Which is actually rather amazing because in Seattle, basements are commonly mildewy and residents just get so used to it that they don’t even smell it anymore. It’s not dark either, mostly because the owners have provided tons of lights with strong bulbs. Also the side that is at ground level gets the west sun in the afternoon.

But the best thing about it is – the absolutely amazing backyard with flowers everywhere!

The backyard is shared with the owners, who live in the main house above us. They’re super nice and we enjoy talking with them. The yellow building is a cute little garden shed. Behind that is the alley between this backyard and the backyards of the houses on the next street down. The alley turns out to be a natural congregation spot as people walk their dogs and work on their cars. We’ve already met a couple of the neighbors, who have been very welcoming and don’t appear to mind that we’re airbnb guests.

We also have a little covered patio space outside our front door that’s private and looks out onto the rest of the garden.

The airbnb is full of handy and fun things – our landlords “thought of everything” and then some! All sorts of little this’s-and-thats. It’s very different from our Boise airbnb which was crisp, clean, new and minimalistic. This one is cozy and lived-in. But still quite clean, which is really important to me.

The neighborhood is an expensive area in the hills right above the Puget Sound in west Seattle, with lots of ultra-cool cafés with artisanal and locally-sourced organic foods in biodegradable packaging. Our hosts stocked our kitchen with fancy little packets of expensive coffees and chocolates and locally made jams and crackers and cheese.

Every single thing we’ve eaten has been fantastic.

Coffee is one of Seattle’s primary pastimes, and sure enough, the kitchen is stocked to meet the needs of any and all coffee drinkers. There’s an electric coffee grinder, a French press, a drip coffee maker, a Keurig, an electric teapot, a stove teapot, various types of filters and several different kinds of coffee (but no decaf…they don’t drink much decaf in Seattle. The winter here is brutally dark, dreary and depressing and people get in the habit of drinking caffeinated coffee all day long just to stay sane).

But this is August! The rains have mostly stopped for one or two brief months. Seattle in August is glorious.

The garden is amazing.

This is the back of the house. The lower windows are our unit, and our front door is under that porch. This is just classic Seattle.

The porch has a hot tub on it, which we can use, by the way, although we haven’t yet. We’re still on mountain time and it stays light so late this far north, we’re having trouble staying awake past dark, lol. We did manage to stay up to see the sunset. We can’t quite see it from our place (our landlords can from the upper stories of the house, but we’re too low). But there are fantastic views from the neighborhood a half a block away.

The location is fantastic; within walking distance of several excellent cafés, two amazing forested parks with trails, and a ferry terminal. All within a few blocks of here.

I think we really got a good deal on this place. The rent is quite reasonable, just a tad more than one of our rentals goes for in Albuquerque. It’s smaller, of course, and not a detached home. But still! West Seattle! I already want to come back next year.

To send Kristina a comment, email turning51bykristina@gmail.com.