Railway links are not in English

Tacoma 28. - 30. July.
The Anderson family lives a beautiful place in a rather new house with a view in Edgewood near Tacoma. We have learned about them via Nina, who is a pen pal to their 10½ year old daughter Kyla. They learned each other in April 2001 in the Coast Starlight.		Andy, Aaron, Carol and Kyla, with grandma behind.
And now some more people at the staircase.		Really the younger brother Aaron was not supposed to be there, but he appeared during the afternoon second day from his baseball summer camp. Here are all the children occupied with a race between to self-made cars with electrical engines.
After a nice evening meal we cleared the tables on the terrace while the sun is setting. The children play basketball in the neighbour’s garden.		What to choose? Kyla has to decide which kind of ice cream. The cake and ice cream is on the table because of Carols approaching birthday.
Tacoma had its own farmers market. Nice weather and a cosy and colourful market with a lot of beautiful flowers for sale.		Also here there were organic products for sale. As these berries.
Again there were many opportunities to study how kilos shape the bodies. No doubt that woman of African origin got the most charming pear shape, while white women more get an apple shape.		The guy with skullcap is asking voters to register to the presidential election. Most likely he is in favour of the Democrat party, who we saw as most active on the street. They said: Help us to get rid of Bush. We could only support that splendid idea, but we could – however – not register.
Some new Czech trams transported passengers from the railroad station (commutertrains) to downtown, right around the corner, uphill.		This is the old beautiful Union Station building. The train terrain is replaced by a freeway, only three tracks have survived and are occupied by BNSF freight trains and once a while an AMTRAK passenger train.
We visited the glass museum in Tacoma. A huge building was devoted to a workshop, where invited glass artist worked together with the local staff to create glass art in front of the audience. You could even watch the progress on video screen.		The audience can sit in front of the stage and are following the processes guided by an interpreter. Impressive and large. In connection to this there was a real museum with temporary and permanent exhibitions.
Poul got finally the opportunity to enjoy a cup of coffee from the omnipresent coffee shop chain Starbucks. The coffee was expensive and good. Notice how they protect (themselves) against lawsuits, if somebody should burn their mouth on the hot coffee!		The final day we went to the ZOO. They had an aquarium; in fact the displays with seahorses were among the best they could present. Notice this dragon fish, amazing!
But many other animals were interesting. The tigers were about to accustom in their new Asian area.		Nice to know that we were well protected from the tigers.
We took our picnic in the rose garden, in fact where Andy and Carol got married. In best American style we rolled the cool box to the best location and could enjoy sandwiches, cold cans of mineral water, low calories chips (and regular). And then we were ready to the airport, and that was that…
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