| You have plenty of options when it comes to choosing how to spend your time in Seattle. Here are a few recommendations and choices for you. Places to Start Things to do/Places to Go Restaurants
Some good places to start when looking for things to do are the official City of Seattle Homepage and the Seattle-King County Convention & Visitors Bureau Homepage. The Seattle Insider and NW Source web sites both have a lot of good information on Seattle and the surrounding area. You can also get good guidebooks from Amazon.com. In particular, you might check out "Seattle Best Places" and "Northwest Best Places." They're both excellent guides to the area. Here are some things to do around the Seattle area. Links are provided where available, but everything should be easily found in a guidebook. If you are planning on seeing many of Seattle's major attractions, we recommend purchasing the City Pass for Seattle. The City Pass covers the following attractions: Woodland Park Zoo
Space Needle
Pacific Science Center
Seattle Aquarium
Argosy Cruises Harbor Tour
Museum of Flight
Site of the 1962 World's Fair, which the King (Elvis that is) immortalized i n the movie "It Happened At the World's Fair," the Seattle Center has a few attractions. The biggest is the city's symbol, the Space Needle, which you can take an elevator up to the top of and get a pretty good view of the city. The Pacific Science Center is a hands on museum dedicated to science and great for kids (they also have an IMAX). There are also some rides and attractions around the base of the Needle, and when you get bored, you can take the Monorail down to the Westlake center (see above) and start shopping.
The brain child of Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen was originally intended as a shrine to local legend Jimi Hendrix, but mushroomed into a temple of all forms of modern music, encompassing rock, pop, rap, jazz, grunge, doo-wop, and everything in between. Visitors can read Hendrix's diaries or drool over his and others' guitars from Allen's personal collection; take a tour back through Seattle's pioneering rock history from The Kingsmen to Cobain; learn to play drums, guitars and keyboards -- or at least create a hell of a noise on them -- in sound-proofed booths; experience the sensation of performing live in the On Stage section, and more. In all, EMP promises over 80,000 music history artifacts, six major sections, a variety of unique concert spaces, and a museum experience unlike any other.
Tourist mecca and well worth a visit. Perched above the waterfront, the Pike Place Market is a real farmers market, with lots of craft stalls to boot. Good food and lots of stuff to see.
Pioneer's Square is, as it's name suggests, the original center of Seattle's downtown. A little rundown and somewhat seedy, there are two major attractions there. The first is the Underground Tour, which takes you (naturally) underground to see the original "ground level" of Seattle's downtown (it's a long story, but basically, most of downtown was raised 10-30 feet after a major fire late in the last century). For book lovers, you can't get away without visiting the Elliot Bay Book Company, the largest independent bookstore in Seattle.
Downtown has become extremely built up over the years, with the centerpiece being a complex of major department stores and trendy malls. The most impressive is the flagship Nordstrom's store (the chain began in Seattle as a shoe store), followed by The Bon Marché department store, and the Pacific Place and Westlake malls. Pacific Place is the newer of the two malls with the more expensive stores (Tiffany, Pottery Barn) and several good restaurants such as Il Fornaio, Desert Fire and Gordon/Biersch.
In a time of entertainment fueled by technology, SAM actually manages to have people lining up around three blocks to look at art, as was the case when it brought the Tutankhamen and Impressionism exhibits to town. Included in the museum's most distinguished permanent exhibits are the collections of Northwest Coast Indian, African and Asian art.
Good places for the kids. The Woodland Park Zoo has all kinds of animals, while the Point Defiance Zoo is more geared towards Northwest wildlife.
For baseball fans and for those who just enjoy a sunny day at a beautiful ball park, check out the AL West champs at the new Safeco Field. The Mariners are in town the week before the wedding with series against Oakland and the Rockies.
A major tourist trap... we mean, tourist attraction. The waterfront is a nice place to stroll on a clear afternoon and see the sights. The Seattle Aquarium's a nice (though not extravagantly big) stop. One thing worth doing if you have the time, is to take an Argosy Cruise. They take you around Elliot Bay, out into Puget Sound a little and then through the Ballard Locks into Lake Union. A great way to see Seattle.
For the more technically minded, you can visit the Museum of Flight down next to Boeing Field (located between the airport and Seattle).
If you're an outdoorsy type, a visit to the main REI store is definitely in order. Besides an amazing array of outdoor stuff (want a custom-built bike? an ice axe? a kayak?) they also have some cool stuff like a large climbing wall and a test chamber for rain gear.
If you're willing to go a little out of town, some places you can go are: Every summer weekend at a rustic barn on the Olympic Peninsula, the Olympic Music Festival presents chamber music. It's a nice mix of highbrow and lowbrow, especially if the weather is nice and you sit out in the field outside the barn and listen. Tickets are required.
Mount Rainer is about 2 1/2 hours away from Seattle proper (although on a clear day it looks about 20 minutes away). It's an impressive site, and there are plenty of places to get out and hike around. Mount St. Helens is about 4 hours away and is impressive even now in the devastation caused by the eruption.
If you were a fan of the Twin Peaks series, this is the trip for you. Snoqualmie Falls (an impressive sight in it's own right) was the falls used in the opening credits of the show. The Salish Lodge was the exterior for the Great Northern Hotel, and is a wonderful luxury hotel with a great spa. A little north of the falls is North Bend which provided many of the exterior shots for the show.
A longer ferry ride away than Whidbey Island, the San Juan islands are great places to really get away and have some relaxation. The main islands people visit are Orcas Island (the biggest), Lopez Island and San Juan Island (Friday Harbor).
If you've got the time, Portland and Vancouver are fun places to visit. Both are about three hours away. Portland, to the south, is a smaller city with a lot of charm and the largest bookstore in the world (Powell's World of Books). Vancouver, to the north, is a city bigger than Seattle with a lot to see and do. Definitely pick up a sightseeing guide before visiting either.
There are lots of good restaurants, but here are a few we personally recommend: Seattle is known for its abundance of Thai restaurants, most of them very good and very authentic. The Thai restaurant that we most frequent is Krittika on the south end of Green Lake on 65th. Great deal for the money. I highly recommend the Tom Kah Gai soup for a starter.
The Pacific Northwest ain't exactly known for its wonderful Mexican food, and it's not a simple task to find authentic south-of-the-border cuisine around here. However, Tacos Guaymas does a good job of filling in the gap. The best and cheapest Mexican food in Seattle! As a bonus, it's within walking distance to my house in Green Lake. 6808 E. Greenlake Way N.
One of the best places to experience Northwest seafood. Located a little out of the way over in Ballard, but worth the drive. Go upstairs and ask to sit on the deck so you have unobstructed views of the sun setting over the Olympics. Bring a jacket, however, as the restaurant is right on Puget Sound and it can get a bit chilly out on the deck, particularly once the yellow orb in the sky sets.
Our favorite neighborhood Indian restaurant. Go for the soft naan appetizer, the Chai tea, and the Tandoori and Vindaloo. If you head down the street towards the University, you will find their sister restaurant, Cedars, another great choice for, Middle Eastern and Mediterranean food.
For the best burgers in Seattle, head to Red Mill up on Phinney Ridge (just west of Green Lake).
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