The benefit of staying outside of Seattle for three days is that we get to see what’s outside of Seattle, for a change. Downtown has so much to offer, the temptation is never to leave. There is a world of food, drink, and stuff to do outside of downtown, and arguably some of the region’s best food can be found in the southern suburbs of Seattle.

On our first night, we visited a bunch of breweries and stumbled upon an African district with a large Ethiopian contingency, but it didn’t end there. We started seeing Somalian, Senegalese, Ghananian, and Kenyan businesses. Thankfully many of them were restaurants.

We opted for Kenyan (Safari Njema), partly because it was in the same complex as the Flying Lion brewery. The food was fabulous and full of flair, with a fried fish that I will never forget. Crisped so thoroughly that all the bones were edible save for the spinal cord, the fish also happened to be tilapia. That fish had no business being so awesome. The dishes were all sublime, including ungali corn bread, peas, collards, cabbage, and goat curry.

Staying close to Renton made it easy to visit the Jimi Hendrix memorial, which was more touching than I even imagined. I could hear the music in the air! He has touched so many. Look at all the kiss marks on his image!

We visited many breweries in the Federal Way-ish area, which seems like redneckland and yet still has microbreweries and cool coffee shops.

The breweries we visited over the past few days include:

• Elliott Bay
• Flying Lion
• Airways
• Puyallup River Valley
• Northwest

Leaving for Mexico tomorrow morning–fly on, little wing!