Hotel Murano, which four years ago was purchased by the Provenance Hotel chain. The former Sheraton is now a sleek, cool museum all its own. From the ceiling of the four-story atrium hang three colored-glass Viking ships by the Danish artist Vibeke Skov. Each floor of the 25-story hotel features a different glass artist, with an exhibit case that welcomes visitors as they step off the elevator.

Even better, once you check into the Murano, you don't need to drive again.

Just a 12-minute walk down the hill are the Tacoma Art Museum, the Washington State History Museum, the Children's Museum of Tacoma and, over a bridge that is a Dale Chihuly exhibit all its own, the Museum of Glass.

At the Washington State History Museum, there are still those exhibitsthat never get old.

You can still press a button and see the Tacoma Narrows Bridge collapse. At another exhibit on the Hanford Nuclear Facility, you can hear a historian describe "Hanford's legacy of waste," and a Nez Perce elder talk about how it took away natives' food, polluted the air and contaminated groundwater.

The History Museum is now featuring a well-timed exhibit called "Hope in Hard Times: Washington During the Great Depression," which runs through Nov. 4.

There is a series of photographs from the Works Progress Administration, which kept people working; and about 100 sketches by Ronald Debs Ginther, who chronicled Depression life while living and struggling in Seattle.

The museum asks visitors to share their memories of the Depression on slips of paper posted on a board. A man