Tacoma Travel OverviewAbout thirty minutes south from Seattle; Tacoma juts northward into Puget Sound with the port Commencement Bay to the east and the Tacoma Narrows to the west. With a beautiful backdrop of the Olympic Mountains and Mount Rainier looming on the horizon; the city boasts more scenic views than Seattle. In the past; Tacoma had earned the nickname “Smellcoma” by Western Washington natives due to the noxious smell of paper pulp factories. Recently; Tacoma has been making leaps and bounds away from its grimy industrial image by welcoming artists with significantly lower rental rates than those in Seattle. The most notable of improvements in Tacoma was the construction of the Museum of Glass. The exhibits received less than stellar reviews when the museum first opened its doors in 2002; but the architecture is stunning and Dale Chihuly’s “Bridge of Glass” make the museum worth the vist. | 