My family’s Christmases are usually filled with family and friends but this year it would just be the four of us. We planned several things to make it special.

The night before Christmas Eve, we visited Temperance Café and Bar, a new speakeasy-themed restaurant with Prohibition-era inspired food and drinks. It’s located in the Chinese Room of the Smith Tower. When it was built in 1914, the Smith Tower was the tallest building in Seattle until 1962 when the Space Needle, built for the World’s Fair, surpassed it. The Smith Tower is still a Seattle icon located in the downtown neighborhood of Pioneer Square. The Chinese Room has a beautifully hand carved teak ceiling as well as an old Chinese teak chair called the Wishing Chair. Legend has it that any unmarried person who sits in that chair will be married within a year. The bar also has an observation deck with a beautiful 360-degree view of Seattle.

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