In my “Day 193” installment of living in Seattle, I shared that I’m really growing to love the area. Make no mistake about it, the winters here are miserable. Miserable. It’s dark all day, it rains all day, and it never really gets that cold. But with the spring I’ve grown to love the area, and have realized that the dreary winters are totally worth it. The weather the past week has been amazing, as it has been sunny and in the mid-60s without a cloud in the sky.
As I mentioned in my previous post I planned on making some road trips with the nice weather, and I made one of those today to Leavenworth. Leavenworth is probably the town that intrigued me most when I originally moved here. It’s a town that’s supposed to resemble a Bavarian village, about a two hour drive out of Seattle. When I first heard about it I assumed it was “authentic” and that it just happened to be where some Germans settled. Then I read the history of Leavenworth, which made me realize the whole town is more or less as authentic as the religious theme park I visited in Buenos Aires.
But that didn’t make me any less interested. So today I made a road trip to Leavenworth, and my gosh, it was amazing. Not so much Leavenworth itself, but the drive. It was quite possibly the most beautiful drive I’ve ever taken.
Even though the pictures don’t really do the drive justice, I’ll still let them speak for themselves. Most fascinating to me (at least as a Floridian) was the amount of snow at low altitudes despite the fact that it was 80 degrees outside.
As far as the town itself goes, as a German it’s kind of funny to visit. Everything in the town has a Bavarian design, from the Subway to the Bank of America to the Cold Stone to the Starbucks to the Howard Johnson. So it’s hilarious. And the main street does look fairly “authentic,” at least if you don’t look at the signs too closely (they just slap the word “Das” — German for “the” — in front of every word and think it’ll make it seem authentic).
But the town is really cute/charming. The main street has a bunch of restaurants and souvenir shops. And while no one in the entire town seems to actually speak a lick of German, the food was good enough. Below are a few pictures.
Das sign
Das Subway
Das main street
Das main street
Das biergarten
Das authentic sign
Das restaurant
I’d return in a heartbeat, and next time spend a night there. The beauty of Leavenworth is that if coming from Seattle, getting there is at least half the fun. Below are a few more pictures from the drive back.
Can’t wait for my next road trip! If anyone has any tips for where I should drive next weekend, please let me know in the comments section.
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