Family Visiting? Take Them on a Stairway Walk!

Along with scattered rainshowers, we forecast good weekend stairway walking along those routes with high spring flower exposure: Laurelhurst (Chapter 6); Eastlake, North Capitol Hill and Portage Bay (Chapter 9); and The Arboretum, Interlaken Park and Volunteer Park (Chapter 14). University of Washington's (Chapter 7) incredible cherry blossom show, featured in our previous post, should continue over the weekend.

This week, with family visiting from Southern California, we thought we'd sample from two routes at one go. We bundled our visitors into extra raincoats and headed out for flower-gazing and stairway sightseeing. The deciduous trees were still barely leafing out, so we could take in some territorial views that will be screened out in a few weeks. Check out the slide show below for a hint of what you can see this weekend!

We started our walk midway along the route in Chapter 14, from the Volunteer Park Water Tower. After climbing the tower stairs and enjoying the views from the top, we walked around to the park's northwest exit for a quick sidetrip over to Streissguth Garden next to the Blaine Street stairs. The Garden gives a great Spring flower show. It's part of an adjoining stairway walk (Chapter 9), and a wonderful detour from this route year-round.

Back on our original route, we made it about halfway into Interlaken Park before turning around to head back up the ravine and out of the park. In a few blocks we stopped for lunch and coffee at Volunteer Park Cafe, right in the heart of the Stevens neighborhood. The cafe occupies a charming 1904 building that housed a small grocery back in the early years of the last century. In fact you'll see the old "Grocery" sign occupying a prominent spot at the back of the cafe.