Northwest Folklife Festival, Day 02

We woke late, 7:30am and went down to enjoy the free breakfast of cook-it-yourself eggs, pancakes, toast and coffee. The Green Tortoise Hostel is full of people from all over the world. Last night we enjoyed the free Sunday dinner with a girl from Korea and her friend from L.A. Our roommates or rather bunk-mates since we’re all sleeping in bunk beds, were from Minnesota and Germany.  After breakfast we headed out in the warm sunshine and spent the next 11 hours at an all day free folklife festival with some of Washington’s finest musicians and dancers. We spent the day bouncing between stages of West African dance from Guinea, big band brass, Ukrainian Dance Ensemble, the lonely coast with Anne Ford, Woody Guthrie’s Columbia River Songs, Speakeasy Band, and to finish the night with the incredible reggae band, Clinton Feeron and the Boogie Brown Band. As the sun set and the lights of the Space Needle began to twinkle, we began to walk the two miles back to the Tortoise, exhausted and smiling, knowing there couldn’t have been a better way to experience Seattle.