Vote for Music for the Eyes?

For the first time ever, Music for the Eyes has been entered in the “Best of Whidbey” contest.  If you are happy with your time in our store, could you take a few minutes to vote for us?  We are entered in two categories:  “Best Shopping Experience” and “Best Gift Shop.” You can follow the… Read more »

Essaouira, Morocco, in Game of Thrones

“Game of Thrones” viewers will know Essaouira better as Astapor, which is the most southern of the three city-states of Slaver’s Bay.   You can remember it as where Daenerys Targaryen bought an army of 8,000 soldiers. Essaouira is a seriously old city.  People have been living there for thousands of years. It was called… Read more »

Shopping in Marrakesh

For our first shopping trip after COVID, we chose to go to Marrakesh.  Morocco has always been one of our favorite destinations, and our store needed some more color and cool Berber jewelry. It is always fun to rummage through interesting looking stores in the souk to hunt for treasures. We loved these metal signs… Read more »

New Whale in Town

When Roderick McLeod and his family moved to Langley around 1900, they built a house on First Street and planted a seedling of a white pine to remind them of their previous home in Nebraska.  The tree took root and grew, just as did the McLeod family.  One daughter, Margaret McLeod, grew up to become… Read more »

New Stuff at Music for the Eyes

  During the time of Covid, we have missed writing about our trips abroad looking for new treasures for Music for the Eyes. In this blog, however, we will tell readers about new items we acquired from Maestrale, a friend’s store just across the water in Port Townsend. Our friend, Jennefer Wood, successfully traveled for… Read more »

Our First Travel Blog in 18 Months–Our Far-Away International Destination? Canada! Eh!

When you last read a travel blog on this website in March 2020, your intrepid travelers Sharon and Fred had barely escaped being locked down in Chile.  We had been refused travel through Canada, and left our Prius stranded in BC.  We managed to rescue the Prius in late 2020–with the help of some brave… Read more »

Unrest and Income Inequality in Chile

We usually try to keep away from politics in our blogs and focus on the people we meet and the sights we see.  In Chile this time, however, politics are so intertwined with the people and the sights, we cannot avoid commenting on what we saw. On our first trip in 2015, we saw a… Read more »

Our (Truncated) Trip to Chile

We have been to Chile twice before and enjoy the country and its people immensely.  Each previous short trip did not give us enough time to visit all of this beautiful country, so we planned a long three-week trip in March 2020. We intended to shop in Santiago and Valparaiso and then head south to… Read more »

The World Nomad Games! What?

Fred was leading a delegation to Uzbekistan in August this year when he learned of the World Nomad Games taking place the following week in next-door Kyrgyzstan. Sharon had lived in Kyrgyzstan for two years back in the 1990’s, with Fred as a frequent visitor.  Both fell in love with this small, poor, mountainous country… Read more »