Salisbury House Bed and Breakfast

May: Festivals and Flowers

2010-05-13T07:38:00.000-07:00

May in Seattle means the rhododendrons are abloom and the mild days stretch long; up to 16 hours of daylight. It's also the beginning of the outdoor festival season. Locally, this weekend we have the University District Street Fair May 15 and 16, a favorite of mine, where "country fair meets urban retail corridor". And in a couple of weeks the Folklife Festival at the Seattle Center. A huge, free Memorial Day weekend of world music, dance, food and crafts in the shade of the Space Needle. It's an easy bus ride to the Center on the #8 bus line from Salisbury House Bed and Breakfast . Or take our local #10 line downtown and then the monorail to get the full 1962 World's Fair flavor.

Further afield is the Maritime Gig Festival in picturesque Gig Harbor, June 5 and 6, with a parade and classic yacht show. A Father's Day weekend choice is the Washington Brewers Festival June 18-20, an all-ages gathering with more than 200 craft beers featured in a bucolic setting across Lake Washington. And another favorite trip of ours is to Kitsap Peninsula for the Forest Theater's outdoor productions in a wild rhododendron glen just outside of Bremerton. See the "Sound of Music" May 30-June 20.

Ongoing outdoor events:

Bicycle Sundays when Lake Washington Blvd is closed to motor vehicles from 10am to 6pm.
Free concerts at the Chittenden Locks every Sunday afternoon at 2pm.
Out to Lunch concert series in a number of downtown locations on Wednesday and Fridays at noon. Free, pick up picnic supplies at the Pike Place Market.

Early Spring Baking

2010-02-12T13:05:00.000-08:00

From the kitchen window of the inn we can track the daily progress towards spring. The massive camellia outside the Garden Room is in full bloom, the crocuses are up and the tiny jonquils in the side yard are getting swelled heads, soon they'll burst open in cheerful yellow.

We've finished the winter renovations, and have made a big dent in the deep cleaning. My office is reorganized and has a fresh coat of paint. Sadly, my terrific assistant, Shelley, has left to start her own inn (more details later!) but I'm taking the opportunity to train my senior housekeeper, Robert, with some of her tasks. This month we are adding baking to his skills. He is bravely taking the spatula to the bowl for the first time ever. He proudly took a loaf of his Lemon Coconut Bread to share with his mother and grandmother. There's nothing better than a man who can cook! Ladies, he's single.

INNProvements

2010-01-12T17:45:00.000-08:00

January is renovation month at Salisbury House Bed & Breakfast. It's the quiet season but that doesn't mean we are snoozing by the fire all the time (though we do a little of that). Between guests we are deep cleaning each of the guest rooms, making repairs and small improvements. The entry, stairs and second floor hallway all have a fresh coat of paint and the public rooms will get a touch up too.

Guests will find new bath salts and cloud-like oversize towels (eco-friendly ones) in their bathrooms. We added a printer available for guest use in the library and our tech guy did something mysterious to speed up our already fast WiFi.

Enjoy a winter discount through March of $15 a night for stays of three nights or more. It's a good time to visit, it may be freezing where you are, but it's pretty mild here, mid 50's and the camellias are just starting to bloom.

New Year's Special-Half Off Room Rate

2009-12-27T09:57:00.000-08:00

Looking for a quick getaway? Need time to recharge with a loved one after entertaining the relatives for the holidays? We have room at the inn! Now through next Sunday 1/3/10 we are offering a New Year's special. Stay one night and get the second night 1/2 off.

It's a great time to take advantage of those after Christmas sales and downtown Seattle is still pretty with lights and Christmas decorations. With your stay you'll receive a "Super Saver Value Guide" your passport to super savings for shopping, the area's top restaurants and attractions.

Give us a call (206) 328-8682, email: sleep@salisburyhouse.com, or check availability at our website www.salisburyhouse.com. Mention the New Year Special.

Waiting for Christmas

2009-12-10T08:14:00.000-08:00

Here's a little peek at the Christmas Tree you won't be seeing at Salisbury House this week. We cut it down at the farm the day after Thanksgiving and conscientiously put it in water when we got home, not suspecting we were going to get a week of weather with highs below freezing. It's frozen solid, canted at the angle it rests against the house, in a large galvanized wash tub, awaiting our usually more temperate winter weather, hopefully we'll get a thaw next week.

But with the free time offered by not having to trim the tree, we have most of the other decorations in place and we are busy baking. Here's the coffeecake you'll want to serve on Christmas Morning

Orange Chocolate Coffee Cake

2 eggs
1 C orange juice
2 tsp vanilla extract
3 C flour
1 C sugar
1 T baking powder
1 tsp. baking soda
1/2 C butter, room temp.
2-11 oz cans mandarin oranges, drained
1C semisweet chocolate chips
1C flaked coconut

Preheat to 375. Butter & flour a 9X13” baking pan.

In a small bowl mix eggs, juice and vanilla.

In a large bowl, stir flour, sugar, baking powder, & soda. Using a pastry blender, or fork, mix in butter until crumbly. Add wet ingredients and mix. Fold in orange segments and chocolate chips.

Pour into pan.

In a medium bowl mix coconut with ½ C sugar and 1T butter. Sprinkle over cake and bake for 35-45 minutes until tests done.

Enjoy!!!

Getting Soaked

2009-11-09T16:19:00.000-08:00

To protect the innocent-and the naked-no photos accompany this blog post.

It's been the usual autumn weather smorgasbord in Seattle, stunningly shiny days with bright blue skies, monsoon-like, warm and wet from a "pineapple express", or just cold and drizzly with gusty winds. On one of these latter afternoons three of my "girls" and I gathered with towels to try out Hothouse, a woman's spa and sauna on Capitol Hill in the Pike/Pine Corridor. We spent a toasty hour soaking in the hot tub, sweating in the sauna or steam room and refreshing ourselves in the cold plunge shower. Not for the bashful, they encourage nudity; but the lights are low, the air is steamy and even though there's a lesbian bar upstairs, we straight gals felt perfectly comfortable. It helps that we've been friends since we were teenagers when the flesh was firmer. So if you don't mind dropping trou with strangers, I can't recommend a better way to spend $12 and a chilly afternoon. They also offer massages by appointment.

Afterwards, damp and relaxed, we walked up the street to Boom Noodle for a little supper. Boom is owned by the same folks who have a local chain of very popular conveyor belt sushi restaurants called Blue C. We snacked on spring rolls, katsu prawns, ahi tacos and calimari and washed them down with cold beer or mojitos. We recommend sitting in the bar, it's slightly quieter since the main dining has very high ceilings, long uncovered tables and the night were there, some noisy kids slurping noodles and fidgeting in their chairs. Deciding to skip the dessert menu, we stopped into Cupcake Royale just a few doors down to indulge in some of their very pretty cupcakes. Is this a great town or what?!

Cathy Wiese-Innkeeper

Remembering Mary

2009-10-26T18:46:00.000-07:00

Co-founder of Salisbury House in 1985, Mary Wiese passed away recently after a severe stroke in late August. She retired from innkeeping about ten years ago but her imprint remains. Her paintings and photographs hang on the walls of the inn and the curtains she designed and sewed flutter in the windows, and she collected, and read, most of the volumes in the library. We are still serving her very popular Oatmeal Pancakes for breakfast at least once a week, look for the recipe in the latest addition of the Best Places Northwest Cookbook and on our website.

She was a traveler, reader, gardener, wife and baseball fan. A talented cook and seamstress, a realtor, innkeeper and community activist-when she was president of the Chamber of Commerce she lobbied hard for what became the #8 bus line that joins Capitol Hill with the Seattle Center. Her mother was a suffragist and Mary remembered coming home from school to a house on Queen Anne Hill that was domestically neglected while her mother was out working on some campaign. Mary was strongly opinionated, but fair-minded and respected the toil and dignity of workers. Her father was a builder in the Midwest, she was born in Lake Forest, Illinois. Affluent as a child, they slowly lost everything in the Depression, the house in Minneapolis and farm in Wisconsin; her father headed to Seattle to find work, first picking hops in the Kent Valley and then again as a builder, when he could finally send for the family.

Mary was the youngest of four and the only girl, wan as a child but a beauty as a young woman. Smart, she skipped a couple of grades and was the first in the family to graduate from college. After college she went to work for United Airlines in San Francisco where she met Charles Wiese, a Marine on recruiting duty, he recruited a wife in addition to scores of grunts. They moved up and down the coast and then in 1961, outside of San Diego, she had a baby girl and this writer came into the picture; because Mary was a lot of things, but most important to me, she was my mother.

--Cathy Wiese, Innkeeper

Seattle Light Rail

2009-09-05T10:48:00.001-07:00

Seattle’s Light Rail Finally Opens!!!

The long wait is finally over, Sound Transit opened in late July and a slick rail line now joins the airport (almost) with downtown. I say almost because the last mile to the terminal at SeaTac International won’t be finished until later this year, but we’ll forgive them the inconvenience of a short shuttle bus ride to the airport, because in the end, it’s finally worth the wait. We took advantage of a “no check-in” afternoon to try it out. The closest station to Salisbury House B&B is downtown at Westlake Center, but the north spur, which will run under Capitol Hill to the University of Washington, is already under construction. Eventually we’ll have a station on the hill near Seattle Central Community College on Broadway.

What we found out. The cars are no frills, but feature big windows and big doors and there’s plenty of room for luggage and hooks for riders to hang their bikes. The ride is very smooth, and the trains run on a seven minute schedule (a little more frequently at rush hour) so there’s no need for a timetable. And each station is interesting.

All public projects in Seattle must spend one percent on art and they did a nice job of picking intriguing pieces without getting anything overtly controversial. And the views of the city are pretty great, making the trip visually pleasing. The line runs underground through downtown, but hits daylight near the ball parks and then goes under Beacon Hill and then south through Rainier Valley (on a clear day you can glimpse some great views of our local glacier-clad volcano). My favorite part of the ride is where the line soars over Interstate 5 south of Boeing Field, is there anything more satisfying than looking down on stop-and-go traffic when you aren’t in it?

On the return trip we got off at the Columbia City station and walked two blocks east to the terrific Columbia City Farmers Market, which runs May thru October on Wednesday afternoons. We took a happy hour break at Island Soul for two dollar Red Stripe beers and a plate of coconut prawns. The chef comped us a couple of his coconut corn muffins, some of the best things to come out of an oven you’ll ever taste. We took the #48 bus back to the inn because we could ride all the way without transferring downtown, it was convenient but not faster, and much bumpier since we were back in city traffic, not gliding along Sound Transit’s smooth rails and dedicated right-of-way.

Japanese Garden Seattle Arboretum

2009-07-11T14:43:00.000-07:00

Japanese Garden

Assistant Innkeeper, Shelley, had muffin duty this morning so Phil and I had some free time. We decided to check out the Japanese Garden in the Arboretum since they re-opened last month after some renovation work. From Salisbury House it’s not far to walk to the Garden, but it is a little adventurous. You walk east on Aloha down the hill and cross 23rd at the light, continuing down what must be some of the steepest blocks in the city, some of the sidewalks are ribbed, to provide more secure footing in damp weather- this isn’t a route for bad knees. At the bottom of the hill you find a ravine, which is in fact the edge of the Arboretum, but you need to turn to the left and walk about half a block until you see a small Park Department service yard; at the north side of the yard is a path that takes you past a tatty storage area then down into the leafy depths of the Arboretum and into the parking lot that serves the Japanese Garden and some playing fields to the south.

The major changes at the Japanese Garden are only at the entrance, which is now designed to look like a small village. Happily the nearly fifty-year old garden hasn’t been fussed with, though it is still meticulously maintained. I love how the Garden seems like the inset of a map, imposed on the lower left corner of the huge, messy and well-used Arboretum.

It was a sultry morning and while it is a warm month away from the blooming azaleas, rhododendrons, and cherry trees, still the air was scented with the sweet scents of foliage and the water lilies were blooming on the small lake. Sitting in the middle of one island of lilies was a large heron, fishing quietly, or perhaps just posing for pictures from the visitors. On bridge a girl feed the salmon sized carp, a few hungry turtles and one placid duck who seemed undisturbed by the roiling fish underneath him.

From the Japanese Garden you can go onto explore more of the Arboretum, but we headed south along Lake Washington Blvd. to Madison St. to one of our favorite restaurants, Cafe Flora, for rosemary lemonades and pizza. The little Madison Valley neighborhood has a number of good choices for lunch and some interesting shops for browsing but we headed back up the hill after lunch. An alternative is the #8 bus which will take you up steep Madison to Thomas where you can hop off the bus right at 16th St. just four, or five, flat blocks from Salisbury House.

Louisa Boren Lookout Park

2009-06-02T08:04:00.000-07:00

A short side trip off the one mile walk through Volunteer Park is Louisa Boren Lookout Park. The park is just North of Volunteer Park and looks out to the East over Lake Washington to the Cascade Mountains. Sun and moon risings can be spectacular. Rising schedules are found at the US Naval Observatory website. The pictures in the video were taken on June 1st at 0520.

One Mile Walk Thru Volunteer Park

2009-05-09T14:34:00.000-07:00

Volunteer Park is an easy walk from Salisbury House Bed and Breakfast. Here is a recommended one mile hike through the park.

View Volunteer Park Walk in a larger map