Northwest passage

Seattle is mad for plaid. But then, it has been since the local grunge-music scene of the mid-80s exploded nationally in the  early 1990s. And of course there was mad-for-plaid lumber jacking, long before that. We spent several days in Seattle last week and loved the upscale plaid -- among other things -- at the small Filson store that houses its retail site with factory in back. Nearly everything is made on site. It's mostly a mail-order business (filson.com) selling beautifully made and expensive outdoor clothes, bags and luggage...

...Too rich for my taste (and not much is made for women) but my husband treated himself to more than a few special items of clothing. Including plaid.

We stayed at Hotel Max (hotelmaxseattle.com). It was way too hip for us. A rock-music oriented boutique hotel downtown, it gives out copies of real Eddie Vedder postcards to guests, hangs Warhols on the walls and builds music-related installations in the lobby. Our room was tiny, clean and colorful, but tiny. Next trip, we're advised by a friend to stay in the Queen Anne neighborhood -- away from downtown construction, traffic and noise. The Sorrento (hotelsorrento.com) is vintage 1909  -- about the age of our Montana bungalow. We definitely will go in that direction and we surely will return to Seattle. It's an 8-hour drive to great shopping and amazing food. It's one of the advantages of living where we do.

One advantage to our tiny 8th-floor Hotel Max room was a view of roof-top gardening, Seattle style. This overly formal roof of a condo building featured fall colors of wisteria on arbors, neatly trimmed shrubs and daily attendance by gardeners. We also saw young hipsters carefully walking their dogs and well-heeled young families taking advantage of a fire pit and barbecue area. I wouldn't want to live in downtown Seattle, but, oh well.

A highlight -- as we were pretending to live the high life -- was dinner at Canlis (canlis.com). It's a family-owned seafood specialist but with all of the trappings of fine European design and service. Men are required to wear jackets. Women -- most of them -- sported cocktail dresses...

We were seated high on a beautifully lit platform of diners. Below us were tables all along tall windows with sweeping views of Lake Union and Seattle, beyond. Standout dishes were the Peter Canlis prawns, in dry vermouth, garlic and lime; the famous grandmother-invented Canlis salad; creme brulee; and, of course, the champagne and wines. Wow, what an evening.

I must say that our favorite meals were much less expensive and much more low-key. The first night, we went directly to  Chinook's At Salmon Bay for freshest fried cod, pan-fried oysters and local craft beers (anthonys.com/restaurants/detail/chinook-at-salmon-bay). Oh, and the view of the Fisherman's Terminal was spectacular. Another day, we lunched at Zagat's highly rated Facing East Taiwanese Restaurant in Bellevue (facingeastrestaurant.com). No view here except for plates of gorgeous stir-fired beef and salt-and-pepper shrimp.

But our favorite quirky stop was at something called Garagiste. It's a hard-to-find warehouse in an industrial area south of downtown. We've been ordering wines from it (garagiste.com) for a few years, after a piece in the New York Times extolled its owner, Jon Rimmerman, and his knack for finding great, relatively inexpensive wines that reflect the vines and the earth in which they're grown. He travels all over the world, but his business really does operate in what looks like a huge garage. We picked up seven cases that had been on order -- from Spain, Italy, France and several of Washington State vintage. We also purchased two wonderful olive oils. It was great fun to see where it all ships from.

It was especially nice, though, to get home. We knew we were almost there when we saw pine trees turning gold -- the Western Larches that populate mountain sides here along with the more familiar fall golds of cottonwood and aspen.
(See more about larches here.)