The Place We're at Now: Seattle, Home For Christmas

Please have snow and mistletoe, and presents on the tree. And oh, God, can we also have fifteen minutes where no one mentions Trump?!

This is a regular feature about where we currently are in the world: how we ended up there, what it costs, and exactly what we think.

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Brent and I are back in our old hometown of Seattle for Christmas!

How did we end up here?

When we left the U.S. to become nomads right after Christmas of 2017, the plan had been to return for the holidays every year. And in 2018 and 2019, we did.

But then came Covid.

In 2020, since everyone was isolating anyway, we spent Christmas in Mexico, and then in 2021, we toured the Christmas markets in Vienna, Austria, on our way to joining friends in Croatia.

That was followed by Christmas in London in 2022, and then in 2023, we took a holiday cruise around New Zealand. In a way, being away from all the holiday madness and obligation was very freeing.

Plus, there are massive tax advantages to being outside the U.S. most of the year.

Before we knew it, we hadn’t been home for Christmas since 2019.

But this year, as fall approached, Brent and I had the same epiphany: it had been too long since we’d spent the holidays with friends and family. After all, Christmas is about far more than just obligations. And some of the madness is kinda fun.

But how to get home? We’d been living in the UK, and we really didn’t want to deal with soul-destroying holiday air traffic.

Fortunately, Brent found a cheap transatlantic cruise from the UK to Florida, with stops along the way in Spain, France, Lisbon, and the islands of Madeira and Bermuda.

Then we caught a mid-December flight from Fort Lauderdale to San Francisco to visit our friends James and Marcy. And on the 19th of December, we caught a short flight up to Seattle.

All in all, it was about as painless as holiday travel can be.

Our trip from the UK back to Seattle for the holidays.

Where are we staying? What does it cost?

We got a truly great deal on that 17-day transatlantic cruise, which was on the Sky Princess (a fantastic new boat): for the both of us, and a “deluxe” balcony cabin that we chose, we paid a total of $3144, gratuities included, or $185/day.

If we’d been okay with an interior cabin without a sitting area, it could have been as cheap as $108/day — which is a reminder that “repositioning cruises” can be an amazing value. And we loved how decked out the ship was for the holidays.

On board the Sky Princess.

In San Francisco, we stayed with James and Marcy — technically, in Oakland.

Here in the Pacific Northwest, we’re spending a few days with Brent’s brother in Seattle and the rest of the time at an Airbnb south of Seattle, near our friends Sarah and Lori.

We’ve stayed at this particular Airbnb before. We usually rent entire apartments for ourselves, but we weren’t planning on being home much, so we were fine with a “room” in a shared house. It’s quite homey and spacious — and somehow we seem to be the only guests.

Plus, the price is excellent. We’re paying $374 for nine nights, or $42.55 per night — Christmas cookies and hot chocolate included.

What have we been doing?

Much mistletoeing and our hearts have been glowing!

And we’re also discovering that everyone is already very, very tired of thinking and talking about Donald Trump, which tells us that for many Americans, it’s going to be a really long four years.

On a San Francisco cable car and on the Embarcadero.

In Oakland with James and Marcy, we saw a holiday show and also hopped onto the BART train for a trip into San Francisco, including Union Square, which was decked out for the holidays. And we walked the Embarcadero with its fantastic view of Alcatraz. We even watched the famous San Francisco Bay fog slowly swallow the Oakland Bay Bridge.

We also rode one of the new self-driving Waymo taxis, which are all over the city. It was equal measures interesting and creepy.

Transportation provided by Skynet.

But the truth is, San Francisco has seen better days.

Here in the Pacific Northwest, we’re spending time with Brent’s brother Craig and his family, and our friends Sarah and Lori.

With Sarah and Lori two summers ago, when the days were warmer and longer.

We’ll have dinner with some other old friends on Christmas Day. And later that night, Brent will meet another old friend, Tom, to engage in an, uh, unusual Christmas tradition: getting terrible tacos at Jack in the Box — the only restaurant open when Brent and Tom were kids, forty years ago.

Seattle is our old hometown, so Michael looks forward to his annual check-in on how the city has changed while we’ve been away. The waterfront has undergone a massive redevelopment, and he’s especially excited to see the latest addition, an elevated park called Overlook Walk.

Here’s hoping Seattle has fared better these past few years than San Francisco.

Since we now only return to the U.S. very occasionally, we also have plenty of chores to do. There’s a year’s worth of mail to be sorted, our annual review with our financial advisor, medical appointments to be kept, and a bit of shopping to be done — items we need to buy that are harder to find or more expensive abroad, including a new laptop and phone for Michael.

Just a bit of the mail and packages we’re sorting through…

What do we think?

They say you can’t go home again. But we’re discovering that, well, you can go home for the holidays.

It’s been wonderful to see everyone — and to surround ourselves with the familiar trappings of the kind of Christmases we used to have.

Is Christmas really the most wonderful time of the year?

So far, yes! At least if we can all agree to shut up about Trump until after the New Year.

Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays!

Brent and Michael

Two weeks ago, in Lisbon, Portugal.

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Michael Jensen is a novelist and editor. For more about Michael, visit him at MichaelJensen.com.