West Seattle, Start at Alaska Junction

Today I spent the entire day in West Seattle. We started with cupcakes and coffee at Cupcake Royale at Alaska Junction…that’s the large and strollable intersection of Alaska and California. There are 2 rival cupcake and coffee bakery/cafes there, both seem to have wifi and filled with people intent on some vital inner thought… of course it is impossible to know what is on their mind, but everyone I looked at seemed to have intent expressions…a man in a t shirt with a laptop in front of him, a young woman sitting quite still looking out the window, two cupcakes under plastic domes on the round table in front of her… Within only a few steps is a great used bookstore, an antique store, a bread bakery…

Sitting there a few minutes, we absorbed the West Seattle ambiance, then met Krista (she’s looking for a house), sat

down and had cupcakes (mine was lemon frosted, yum) and really good coffee, and planned our ittenary from a selection of homes I’d printed out and brought along that fit within her criteria. Then we all piled into Jim’s Jeep and commenced to zig zag West Seattle in search of the perfect 3 bedroom home…saw some very nice ones in fact! There were also a couple that were priced as great investments but needed quite a bit of work, which was not what we wanted on this day. However, we found that one particular neighborhood had a lot of houses that really might work. In particular one with 1800 square feet and a really great remodeled kitchen was pleasing. It was built in 1912 and retained the solid character, great moldings, and nooks and interesting spaces, but had been redone and really would be easy and rewarding to live in. Great day.