Issue link: http://digital.canadawide.com/i/299622
s u m m e r 2 0 1 4 | g o i n g p l a c e s 47 Happily she's still digging here, just three kilometres from downtown, and rolling out just-picked strawberries in a wheelbarrow. We snag a couple and marvel at their sweet- ness. Bees fl it about, straying from on-site hives, uninter- ested in anything but the blooms. Everything is allowed to go to flower, resulting in an unlike-anywhere-else honey. Back at Bite, we slather that malty and molasses-like honey on fresh bread for breakfast, a tasty teaser for chef Stickle's eggs Benedict with Carkner's Walla Walla onions, followed by those fi eld-fresh strawberries with mint. There's an authentic, artful touch to everything in Tacoma – whether glassworks, cocktails, eggs Benedict or architecture – that gives this place a hip-and-happening feel, where old and new meld into a cool second coming. is city once rivalled Seattle after all. ere's evidence of past and present grandeur throughout, from the classic 1918 Pan- tages and Rialto theatres to the hangar-like modern wonder of LeMay – America's Car Museum and downtown's gleam- ing tramline. We can't seem to walk a few feet in Tacoma without bumping into something interesting to look at and almost fall into what was once Old Woman's Gulch, where widows of labourers once lived in shanties. e land is now the location of Sta- dium High School and Bowl, where football games take place – and Hollywood movies. As the setting for the cult fi lm 10 ings I Hate About You (a modern interpretation of e Taming of the Shrew starring Heath Ledger in his breakout role), the French-château-style building is the real star. Built high above Commencement Bay as a luxury railway hotel in Tacoma's early 20th-century heyday, it was brilliantly transformed, complete with turrets and towers, into a high school in 1913. Refl ecting the "grandeur of the poetic spirit," as one of the archi- tects said long ago, it is yet another example of Tacoma audacity. " e most exciting attractions," to quote another Warhol truism, "are between two opposites that never meet." Tacoma embraces its opposites: a gritty past and artsy present that do in fact meet, creating one beguiling destination coming into its own. traveltacoma.com GP Hangar-like architecture and classic cars at LeMay – America's Car Museum; (right) the art-lined Hotel Murano's locavore-focused Bite Restaurant. barb sligl p42-47Tacoma.indd 47 14-04-10 2:28 PM