It would have been cool to do a proper tour of Leavenworth here, but as always when I'm on vacation, I was in a bit of a hurry! It's already a fairly long drive from Spokane to Seattle (at least when you drive the slow non-freeway way) and I had a side trip to
Oak Harbor planned, so I didn't have a whole lot of time here. But I had promised my parents that I would get them something from the German bakery, so I grabbed a few pictures on my way there from the free parking space I had found pretty far out (most of the parking in town is paid, unsurprisingly).
I normally find this sort of themed architecture to be a bit tacky, but Leavenworth has done a pretty good job of it (though that's coming from someone who has not yet been to Germany!). I particularly like the buildings with murals all over the facade -- that's the style that Safeway was trying to emulate, but some of the buildings downtown do a much better job of it (unsurprisingly).
And of course, the foothills of the Cascades provide a beautiful backdrop for the town. The Cascades are no Alps, but they're still pretty.
And, for the final European touch, there's even a building encased in scaffolding! 😉 I feel like I see that a lot more in Italy than I do around here.
Anyway, that's it for Leavenworth, but around this time in October I should be back with some nice pictures of real Germany! I'm not entirely sure how I'm going to like Germany, but I'm sure it will at least be scenic.
Ha, well, this is certainly a more credible effort to emulate Bavaria than some other efforts I've seen elsewhere in the US. Frankenmuth, MI is a Bavaraian-themed town, though certainly without the mountains like Leavenworth has, lol. Frankenmuth is also a Kroger town and so there is a Bavarian-themed Kroger there, but it is a pretty mediocre effort compared to what you see here and it has Kroger levels of maintenance. First I'll show you a 2018 Street View of it: https://maps.app.goo.gl/A71NARJ1m2CcfPHE9
ReplyDeleteOk, while it lacks authenticity, it does look okay there, but then realize that somewhere along the way, the balcony started to fall apart so Kroger just took it down entirely without replacement! Link: https://maps.app.goo.gl/4pj5inTLv9jb3jBp9
Oh, Kroger...lol.
Michigan has another Bavarian-themed town, Gaylord, but that is far enough north that it is out of Kroger's reach. Thus, Family Fare is the supermarket there and they have a much more credible effort. In addition to having a matching attached Dairy Queen (yep!), the clock on the front facade acts like a real cuckoo clock and has dancing elements at the top of the hour. I think there are videos of it in the Google entry for it: https://maps.app.goo.gl/SVt4DwvPDXZcVg2f6
The truth of the matter is that even in Bavaria, there are certain tourist traps which look more Bavarian than anything where actual Bavarians hang out on a regular basis, lol. I know Italy has certain things (supposedly ITA is seriously considering adding IAH-FCO flights now...just to show you how bonkers the demand is for Americans to go to Italy!) and we have them in Texas too with cowboy-themed dance halls and such. Fortunately, most of that is in North Texas (Ft. Worth) and Austin to some extent and not here in Houston. It probably helps that we don't have tourists so that cuts down on the tourist traps, lol.
There's no question that Leavenworth is a tourist trap, but I still kind of like it. Normally I dislike the sort of inauthenticity that Leavenworth represents (both the tourist trap nature and the faux-historic architecture -- I've long hated new-to-look-old designs), but I still like it.
DeleteSeattle has its share of tourist traps, but luckily they're mostly concentrated on the waterfront, so it's easy to just avoid that area in tourist season! It's pretty easy to avoid tourist traps in Italy too, but we'll see what it's like in the other places I'm going this year -- my impression of Switzerland was that it all felt like one big tourist trap (particularly with all the blatant price-gouging going on), albeit an extremely scenic one.