It was a cold, clear December day, and we headed for the island. The downtown ferry terminal is a very short drive from our roost atop Queen Anne Hill, and we were driving onto the boat scant minutes later.

Our friends joined us aboard: the Pramas-Lindroos-Kate Axis as well as Jess, a longtime fellow traveler now working with John at Flying Lab. We sat by a big picture window and as we sailed across Puget Sound, Kate pointed out a couple of seals frolicking in the chilly water.

Our destination was Bainbridge Island, which for this particular day was more like Christmas Island — the one in the song, at least. (Unlike the real Christmas Island, Bainbridge is not a “non-self governing territory of Australia“.) Our nominal goal was a visit to the Island Holly Farm to purchase a wreath for our door, but as this was the weekend of both the Bainbridge Island Studio Tour and Christmas in the Country, it proved to be an excellent way to start the holiday season.

Bainbridge is just a thirty-minute ferry ride from downtown Seattle, so close that it’s hard to justify not going now and then. But that watery gulf makes for a powerful mental block. Jess, one of the very few native Seattleites we know, had only been there once, on a trip mostly obscured by dim memory. The island is rural, with just one real town. A swarm of back-to-the-land baby boomers came here in the 1970s, leading to occasional tension between the crotchety island old-timers and the Birkenstock-patchouli people who have all the money. (A proposed roundabout was bitterly divisive, as it was either a progressive solution to traffic problems or a first, treacherous step in appeasing Hitler, depending on whom you asked.) But the little downtown is lovely, some forms of commercialization are kept at bay, and it meets all the requirements of an island as it is helpfully surrounded by water. Jenny lived there for several years, a humble island woman mending the nets of the fisher folk each day and playing the ukelele for the festive and colorful native dances. Or so John pretends.

We made a quick stop at the Chamber of Commerce to acquire maps and then rolled on for the Island Holly Farm. This tiny family farm has a grove of holly trees and a small building where, it appeared, teenage boys were grudgingly employed in the prickly practice of wreath-making. Hot cider and cookies were available and soon enough we had our wreath, as well as assorted branches bought by the pound for purposes of decorating our hearth. We have no hearth, unfortunately, but we do have a short bookcase at the ready.

The farmers had sad news, at least for us: this is the last year for the Island Holly Farm. Come the new year, they’re going to cut down the holly grove and plant blueberries there instead. “My husband is retiring,” Mrs. Wilson said, “and we want to do something that takes a lot less work.” So it’ll be you-pick blueberries at what we presume will be the Island Blueberry Farm. We’re sad we won’t be able to travel to the island to get our wreath next year, but happy we made the trip one last time.

With assorted wreaths and branches purchased, our intrepid explorers needed food. Bainbridge is blessed with a variety of terrific restaurants and we settled on the Big Star Diner. This is a genuine diner, decades old and made of gleaming steel, which was moved here and lovingly refurbished about a decade ago. As you can see, we were pleased with the food.

From there we headed to our first stop on the Christmas in the Country tour, the Hazel Creek Farm whose large barn housed a crafts fair. Local musicians played and stomped on a stage as we mingled with the locals and the craftspeople, looking for funsies and sampling the food. John bought a spider made of old typewriter parts. Outside, a guy was selling hot homemade bratwursts from a tent, and even though we had just eaten, they were too tempting to ignore. First Chris and Jess split one, and then when John emerged and found he’d missed out, Chris and John split one. We think Chris got the best part of that deal.

There were horses near the barn and Kate had several things she needed to tell them, or so it seemed as the rest of us waited from a distance. The sky was clear but everything was damp from the recent cold spell, and in places we found snow still on the ground.

Continuing our theme of only going places where there was food, our next stop was the Blackbird Bakery. They have display cases full of wonderful cookies, breads, and other treats, but the real goal was The Best Latte In The World, at least according to John. Blackbird did not let us down and the latte-drinking contingent among us pronounced them fabulous.

Our next stop was the Christmas House, a 1910 building jammed full of eccentric antiques, Christmas trinkets, and plain old junk. This was a long drive and Kate fell asleep in the back while the grown-ups chatted and admired the scenery. Afterwards we visited one more Christmas crafts collection at the Little Yellow Farmhouse, boggling at the oyster shells painted to look like Santa Claus.

Then the time came for one last destination, one which we’d all been looking forward to the entire day: the Bainbridge Island Vineyards & Winery. They grow all their grapes there on the property and produce about ten different wines, including several delicious dessert wines. We tasted quite a few of their vintages and came away laden with bottles. Chris and Jess sat out front smoking cigars for a bit as the sky grew dim and the air got colder. It was time to take our treasures and head for home.

Our trip to Bainbridge was a great way to inaugurate the season and spend time with friends in a special place. And as if to signal that this excursion really was the start of the holidays, upon disembarking the ferry and returning home to downtown Seattle that evening we found the streets were rampant with drunken, joyous Santarchists on a pub crawl. It was a Christmas miracle!

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