Issue link: http://digital.canadawide.com/i/303828
s u m m e r 2 0 1 4 | w e s t w o r l d 41 snag a couple and marvel at their sweetness. Bees flit about, straying from on-site hives, uninterested in anything but the blooms. Everything is allowed to go to flower here, resulting in an unlike-anywhere-else honey. Back at Bite, we slather that malty and molas- ses-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 field-fresh strawberries with mint. ere's an authentic, artful touch to every- thing in Tacoma – whether glassworks, cock- tails, 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, and there's evidence of past and present grandeur through- out, from the classic 1918 Pantages and Rialto theatres to the hangar-like modern wonder of LeMay–America's Car Museum and down- town's gleaming 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 long-gone widows of labourers lived in shanties. e land is now the location of Stadium High School and Bowl, where football games take place – and Hollywood movies. As the setting for the cult film 10 Things 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 Com- mencement 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. Reflect- ing the "grandeur of the poetic spirit," as one of the architects said long ago, it is yet another example of Tacoma audacity. "The most exciting attractions," to quote another Warhol truism, "are between two oppo- sites that never meet." Tacoma embraces its opposites: a gritty past and artsy present that do in fact meet, creating one beguiling destina- tion coming into its own. traveltacoma.com W 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 NEW HEATED SEAT p36-41_Tacoma.indd 41 14-04-11 2:43 PM