A peaceful day

A walk down town is usually an adventure of sorts. And usually, I enjoy it quite a lot. Most often, I go through Virginia Mason, where I work, and can take the stairs, thereby avoiding a big hill. Nicer yet, I usually see some of my colleagues there and garner a smile and a friendly “Hi!” This is always a day lightener. Then I amble through the Freeway Park, an oasis – not really in the middle of downtown - but next to the middle of downtown. This is a rest spot for the city’s all too many homeless folk, office workers on their lunch breaks, conventioneers with pen holders in their pockets, and like me, people passing through on their way to somewhere else. It seems as though every time I walk through, there is a different landscape and a different population, both human and doggie.
Then on through the Washington Convention Center where I avoid another hill by taking three long escalators. Rebecca and I amuse ourselves by observing the convention attendees’ fashion acumen, nerd potential, and good humor quotient, and then deciding what the convention might be about. We are actually quite successful at this.
There is nearly always an art exhibit of some sort, and on this day, there were textile artworks. Here are two of them which appealed to me. The various art exhibits are often not your usual fare. As well as paintings and photographic images, there are sometimes exhibits of fabric, sometimes calligraphy, sometimes collage - the list goes on and on. We always stop to use the facilities on the second floor, with the mirrors which also go on and on, and this time there was a new installation – a super powerful hand dryer. It sounded like a jet taking off and felt like drying your hands in a gale force wind. Scary!
Finally, looking down on the street below, then one more escalator trip, and one emerges downtown, and can carry on with the mission which brought one – the dentist, a movie, or maybe shopping in the Public Market.
Some other Freeway Park pictures here (the top two.)