10th/19th Anniversary Getaway: Port Townsend 2023

[Adapted rom travelogue email sent at 3:31 p.m.] Saturday, June 10 Owl Sprit Cafe, Port Townsend, WA: dinner the first of our two nights in this town of 10,148—which, incidentally, is all of one third the size of the Seattle neighborhood in which we live. This, in fact, is my tenth visit to this town, 41 miles as the crow flies but about a two-hour drive (because it%e2%80%99s across the Puget Sound), in the 25 years I have lived in Seattle. It%e2%80%99s only the second time I have come with Shobhit, the last having been about two years ago, the day trip for Auntie Rose%e2%80%99s memorial service. This was also my first time staying overnight there in 23 years: the last was the two nights I stayed at Auntie Rose and Uncle Imre%e2%80%99s house, in 2000, that being the last of three visits I made to stay with them in as many years in the first three years I lived in Seattle. Somehow in all these visits, having long known Port Townsend was a Victorian seaport town, I never fully registered what a true hipster enclave it also is. Maybe because most of my other visits I was hanging out with my elderly (and beloved!) great aunt.

This visit, however, was to commemorate Shobhit's and my anniversary—the 10th of our wedding; the 19th of our first date—although the actual date of our anniversary is not until Wednesday, the 14th. And, of all our out-of-town anniversary trips that have been a tradition since the wedding, this is only the second we took that was not out of state (the first was our trip to the Washington coast that was our first post-covid trip out of the city in 2020). As you all know, Shobhit has been very busy running for Seattle City Council, so we were unable even to decide for certain we would take a trip at all until just last Thursday. And, having just a two-day window, we settled on somewhere relatively close by. Port Townsend is a very cool town that is pretty easy and relatively quick to get to from Seattle. Here we're on one of the several piers off of Water Street, which we walked along after dinner. It's basically the main street of the center of this small city.

Seen on the floor next to my feet while in line at Elevated Ice Cream. It would actually be one of several signs we saw of local support for Pride, which is always a comfort out in the boonies. Sometimes it's easy to forget there are progressive boonies.

Our dessert at Elevated Ice Cream. I was just going to get a single scoop cup of dark chocolate caramel swirl for myself, but then Shobhit decided he wanted a banana split. Hey, fresh fruit, that makes it healthy! The other scoops we chose were Dutch Malt and Amaretto Hazelnut. Shobhit wanted to make it with three of their specialty flavors, and I'm not sure doing flavors other than the standards (chocolate, vanilla, strawberry) was the best idea—they just melted together and lost any real sense of individual flavor. So, take note and learn a lesson from our foolishness!

We stayed at my dad's cousin Valerie's second house in Port Townsend, which is only two houses away from the one her dad, Uncle Imre, still lives in. This is the stunning view from their living room, of Discovery Bay and the Salish Sea beyond, at sunset. Shobhit and I had gone back and forth on where to stay, after settling on the idea of somewhere relatively close by, on the Puget Sound. Trying to book a place at a reasonable price on only two days' notice proved to be a challenge, particularly in Port Townsend, which had been our first choice. To save on the expense we had settled on one night instead of two, at a place I found in Langley on Whidbey Island, instead of Port Townsend. I was literally about two minutes from loading the credit card number for my new Apple Card (I want that 1% cash back!) to book via Hotels.com when I saw that Valerie had texted me back. I had actually only texted her with the idea of maybe getting brunch or something together on the off chance this would be a weekend she and her husband Scott were out at the house in Port Townsend. When she texted me back, though, she said she had to be at home in Bellevue over the weekend, but if we needed a place to stay, we were welcome to stay at her place in Port Townsend. Oh wow. Well all right then! Something to know about me: I really have no discomfort with accepting offers of generosity. This was a pretty big one, and I took it. This saved us about three hundred bucks! A true gift for our tenth/nineteenth anniversary, which was deeply appreciated.

Sunday, June 11 We did bring a lot of our own stuff, just to make sure all our bases were covered and also not to use up too much at the house they had not known, when they last left, would be occupied this weekend: bath towels, bar soap, a roll of toilet paper, a thermos with milk—and a bag of cereal, so I could eat my breakfast of choice on the front patio lawn chairs on Sunday morning, continuing to lap up this gorgeous view.

In this shot, you can see the white railing to the far left of the house, behind which the previous shot was taken. You can't see it from this angle, but it is from this angle that Auntie Rose and Uncle Imre's house is further up the hill, directly behind the house.

Looking up from the bottom of the stairs to the basement. I had to share this because I found it so amusing, this artifact of the early lives of Valerie and Scott's children, who are both now in their twenties. Their names are Nick and Ava, and you can see how Nick had once claimed the bottom step in this shot: NICK RULES. Valerie noted over text that they each claimed other steps over time, and I did later notice steps further down that said Ava's Step or Nick's Step. I knew Valerie and Scott had gotten this house right by Auntie Rose and Uncle Imre, but I guess I made the mistake of continuing to think they had done so recently, while years continued to fly by. Clearly they had it when Nick and Ava were little, which means at the very least they've had the house for somewhere around fifteen or twenty years. I was thinking about this, and suddenly remembered that Valerie's children were both born around the new millennium. Ugh. Getting old is such a pain in the ass! Side note: I tend to be the only person in any room who gives a shit about the technicalities of distant relations, but Valerie being my dad's first cousin makes her my first cousin once removed. Second cousins are the children of your parents' cousins: that makes Nick and Ava my second cousins.

And here is Uncle Imre, now ninety years old, and who has been visiting Auntie Rose's grave every day since she was buried in 2020. I honestly had no idea whether we would see him while we visited this weekend; I never had a fully clear sense of Uncle Imre's thoughts about me, in pretty stark contrast to Auntie Rose, who was one of the most open-hearted people in my life when she was alive, even being the single person from her generation to attend (and even dance at) Shobhit's and my wedding in 2013 (she brought Valerie, not Uncle Imre, as her plus-one). To be fair and clear, he was always very cordial and polite with me, always shook my hand whenever I saw him—he just didn't, for example, accompany Auntie Rose to any same-sex weddings. And also, yesterday, I got another text from Valerie, saying, dad would like to invite you to visit mom at the cemetery today. I had only been to Auntie Rose's grave once before, when I met up with Valerie at Fort Worden for my State Parks Tour for my Birth Week in 2021; in fact it was the first memorializing of any kind we were able to do for Auntie Rose since the pandemic. Thus, I was already thinking I'd like to go out to see Auntie Rose's grave again, so this was actually perfect.

My favorite view of Auntie Rose's grave site, which is prettier than ever with many fresh flowers packed together all over it: partially shaded under one of the few trees amidst the gravestones, next to the bench Uncle Imre sat on daily for over two years. (His knees have apparently both gotten bad, so now he sits in the car by the grave when he visits.) One of Uncle Imre's caregivers (apparently one of many that take on different shifts), Mariah, had driven him there, and Shobhit and I followed them behind. The four of us stayed at Laurel Grove Cemetery for just under an hour, Shobhit taking a walk at one point to see what was the oldest gravestone he could find. He found one for a person who died in 1868. I've spent a lot of time trying to find out otherwise exactly how old this cemetery is, and cannot find any source with any specificity. If nothing else, it clearly dates back to the mid-nineteenth century.

Orca skeleton, which was reassembled in 2011 and has been hanging ever since at the Port Townsend Marine Science Center at Fort Worden State Park—which, after ten visits to Port Townsend, I actually went into or the first time. The Science Center consists of two buildings, one the museum seen here, the other a small aquarium at the end of the pier across the street. Admission is only $7 for adults, and Shobhit and I both found it to be more than worth it—especially thanks to self-described "geek" volunteer Linda, who spoke to us extensively in the museum. Shout out to Linda! Go to this museum and ask for her, she's awesome. She knows all about all the whales you'll see here, particularly this orca, which she got to help put together in 2011. Shobhit and I were both very impressed by that, and I said more than once how awesome an experience that must have been, and she delighted in telling us all about it, as well as the many other things we had plenty of questions about. We had plenty of discussion about how shockingly intelligent orca whales are.

Still at Fort Worden State Park: Point Wilson Lighthouse, built in 1879 (later than Laurel Grove Cemetery!) and which I last visited, with Auntie Rose, in 1998. Twenty-five years ago! If someone could just tell the planets to stop spinning, that would be great.

On the other hand, there's this spectacular photo of me taken by the lady at the top of the lighthouse, who let people come up that last ladder briefly one at a time. I love everything about this photo: the lighting, the composition, the colors. The lady at the lighthouse did a good job.

I didn't want Shobhit to feel left out.

Is 36 minutes too little time to grab a quick cocktail and a slightly undercooked pretzel at Admiralty Fine Foods? Of course not!

Check this shit out: at the Rose Theater's Starlight Room, which has its own entrance (up three flights of stairs—there's also an elevator) and its own ticketing counter, at showtime, an employee manually closes all those velvet curtains, and then a projection screen comes down in front of those front windows. At the recommendation of Gabby at work, we went ahead and experienced this fantastically unique movie theater, which was playing the new Nicole Holofcener film You Hurt My Feelings. I had already seen it, but as I quite liked it, I was happy to see it again just to experience this theater. Shobhit and I shared a two-person sofa over to the right, with our large bowls of popcorn with real butter and a marionberry cider. And, as I was away on a trip, this worked well for me as now I wouldn't have to write a new movie review while I was traveling. At first I wasn't thinking going to a movie was realistically in the cards for this trip, in spite of the unlikelihood of my going to this theater any time soon, if ever, otherwise. But, before we left town on Saturday we met a woman who recommended this place called Soak on the Sound where you can soak in sea salt water hot tubs in private rooms. The woman even assured us it didn't matter that we hadn't packed swimsuits because it was clothing-optional and the rooms are private anyway. And: we actually seriously considered this, even at $44 per person for fifty minutes of soaking. We even walked inside to ask a few questions. But, I now had a point of comparison when it came to cost, and when I suggested the Starlight Room as a far cheaper thing to do late Sunday afternoon, well, you can see which direction we went! Even with far more concessions than I usually buy at the movies, for the two of us the Starlight Room was roughly half the cost.

When we were at the cemetery, Uncle Imre asked us to stop by the house to say hi if we got the chance. At that point we had no idea whether there would be time for it, after going to the movie. In the end there was plenty of time, so once we got back to the neigborhood—actually a private community called Cape George on the western shore of the Quimper Peninsula opposite Port Townsend, the population of which has proved impossible for me to ascertain—we went straight to the house, which I had not been inside of in twenty-three years. A different caretaker was on a new shift with him, and she went inside (which was not at all necessary) while Shobhit and I sat to visit with Uncle Imre for a while where he was already sitting on his deck overlooking Discovery Bay. And, damn, I had nearly forgotten how heart-stoppingly beautiful the view is from their house. The view from Valerie's house is still spectacular in its own right, but this view really could not be beat. Also, it did seem like Uncle Imre was pretty happy for us to have stopped by to see him again. I'm guessing he doesn't get visitors nearly as often as he'd like. We hung out for another hour or so, maybe ninety minutes.

After a little while we all moved inside the house, and we sat in the living room to visit, along with the caregiver, for a bit. I noted at one point that all three of them have accents ("I do?" the caregiver quipped): Shobhit is from India; the caregiver, whose name I unfortunately can't remember, is from Germany; Uncle Imre is from Hungary. Which brings me to the image above. Uncle Imre had pointed out the wonderful wall of family photos on the north wall of the living room, and then pointed specifically to this one. Apparently this is a portrait of people Uncle Imre once worked with in a coal mine in Hungary. He asked us to guess which one was him; "Imre" is not written anywhere because, he said, they all had nicknames. His was "Kato": third from the left. This image is dated 1956, when Uncle Imre would have been 34 years old. I'm pretty sure Uncle Imre told us yesterday that 1956 was also the year he came to the U.S.—where he married Auntie Rose, my maternal grandmother's eight-years-younger sister, in 1963, when Auntie Rose was 26 and Uncle Imre was 31.

. . . Anyway! This was an anniversary weekend getaway, but it also became largely about family connections and memories. I was totally good with that! In fact, I'd have to say this became an opportunity to connect directly with Uncle Imre in a way I really never had before, and I'm really glad. We spent maybe a cumulative two and a half hours with him, though, and otherwise just had a lovely and relaxing time in a charming little town on the Olympic Peninsula. And I do mean relaxing: Valerie and Scott's living room furniture there consists of blanket-covered wood reclining chairs and ottomans so comfortable, I truly don't have any idea how they don't fall asleep while watching TV in them. That's what I did . . . thereby completing the process, apparently, of turning into my grandfather.