Seattle

Top things to do in Seattle

1. 01

   Pike Place Market - the working market above the waterfront

   food shopping 👍 Popular

   A covered market running since 1907 on a bluff over Elliott Bay, stacked over several levels of fishmongers, produce farmers, flower stalls, cheesemongers and a warren of small shops down the stairs at the back. The fish-throwing counter and the gum-covered alley draw the crowds, but the market is genuinely used by locals for groceries; come before mid-morning to see it working rather than performing, and note that the shopfront Starbucks calls its original sits on the cobbles opposite.

2. 02

   Space Needle - the 1962 world's fair tower

   scenic history 👍 Popular

   The saucer on legs built for the Century 21 Exposition and still the shape everyone draws when they draw Seattle, with an observation level and a revolving glass floor near the top. The 360-degree view lays out the sound, the lake, the two mountain ranges and the volcano in one turn on a clear day, which is exactly the problem: it is worth timing around the weather rather than around your itinerary.

3. 03

   Chihuly Garden and Glass - blown glass under the tower

   culture arts 👍 Popular

   Eight galleries and a glasshouse at the foot of the Space Needle showing the work of Dale Chihuly, who grew up down the road in Tacoma and turned studio glass into something architectural. Chandeliers, a ceiling of glass forms lit from above, and an outdoor garden where the pieces are planted among real foliage so it takes a second to tell them apart. The most photographed interior in the city, and it earns it.

4. 04

   Washington State Ferries - walk on at Colman Dock and cross the sound

   scenic ⭐ Highly recommended

   The car ferries out of the downtown dock are ordinary public transport, and walking on as a foot passenger is the best-value hour in Seattle: the skyline pulls away astern, the Olympics fill the windscreen, and on the return leg the city comes back at you with the volcano behind it. The Bainbridge Island run is the classic, the Bremerton run is longer and quieter, and you can simply ride and come back.

5. 05

   Ballard Locks - boats, fresh water, salt water and a salmon ladder

   nature wildlife history ⭐ Highly recommended

   The Hiram M. Chittenden Locks have joined Puget Sound to Lake Union and Lake Washington since 1917, and you can stand a metre from the wall while yachts, fishing boats and tugs are raised and lowered. A fish ladder alongside carries salmon back up to spawn, with underwater viewing windows where you can watch them push through in summer, and there is a small botanical garden on the bank above. Free, endlessly watchable and pure Seattle.

6. 06

   Museum of Pop Culture - grunge, sci-fi and a crumpled Gehry building

   culture arts nightlife music

   Frank Gehry's shattered-guitar building at Seattle Center holds the deepest collection anywhere on Nirvana, Jimi Hendrix and the Northwest scene that produced them, alongside science fiction, fantasy and horror galleries and a sound lab where you can play badly in a soundproof room. Founded by a Microsoft co-founder as a Hendrix shrine and grown outwards from there; the monorail runs straight through the middle of the building.

7. 07

   Kerry Park - the skyline view everyone else has already taken

   scenic

   A viewing terrace barely bigger than a tennis court on the south slope of Queen Anne hill, and the source of virtually every photograph of Seattle you have seen: towers, the Needle at the right height, cranes and ferries on the bay, and the volcano lined up behind on a clear day. Go at dusk when the lights come on. It is residential and cramped, so arrive on foot or by bus rather than hunting for a parking space.

8. 08

   Museum of Flight - Boeing's first factory and a hangar of aircraft

   history culture arts

   At Boeing Field south of the centre, built around the red wooden barn where William Boeing started building seaplanes, and one of the great aviation museums anywhere. A Concorde, the first jet Air Force One, an SR-71 Blackbird, a full-fuselage space shuttle trainer and a hall of First World War and Second World War machines, with a walkway over the runway apron. Give it half a day, more if aircraft are your thing.

9. 09

   Pioneer Square and the Underground - the city buried beneath itself

   history culture arts

   Seattle's oldest quarter, a compact grid of heavy Romanesque brick thrown up in a hurry after the 1889 fire, with a small park, art galleries and the free Klondike gold rush museum. Guided tours drop into the sealed storefronts and pavements one storey below the current street, left over from when the city raised its roads out of the tidal mud, and the guides tell the story with more comedy than reverence.

10. 10

    Discovery Park - bluff trails to a lighthouse on the sound

    nature wildlife scenic

    The city's largest park occupies a former army post on the Magnolia headland, with meadows, second-growth forest, sea cliffs and a loop trail that swings out to a low white lighthouse on a spit of beach. Bald eagles, seals and the odd whale offshore, the Olympics straight across the water, and it is big enough that you can lose the city entirely for an hour.

11. 11

    Seattle Central Library - the book spiral in a glass origami box

    culture arts

    Rem Koolhaas and OMA's central library, opened in 2004, is a folded glass and steel structure that still looks like nothing else downtown. Inside, the entire non-fiction collection runs up a continuous gentle ramp so the classification never breaks across floors, there is a startling red corridor of meeting rooms, and the tenth-floor reading room looks out over the bay. Free, open to anyone, and the best wet-afternoon building in the city.

12. 12

    Seattle Art Museum and the Olympic Sculpture Park

    culture arts scenic

    The downtown museum is strong on Northwest Coast Indigenous art, Australian Aboriginal painting and Asian collections, with the hammering man silhouette outside the door. Its sculpture park is free and open all hours: a zigzag of reclaimed industrial land stepping down over the railway and the road to the beach, with large outdoor works and the sound and the Olympics as the backdrop.

13. 13

    Fremont - the troll under the bridge and the self-declared centre of the universe

    off beaten path culture arts

    A canal-side neighbourhood that spent the 1990s declaring its independence in signage, best known for the concrete troll clutching a real Volkswagen Beetle under the north end of the Aurora Bridge, plus a salvaged Lenin statue, a rocket fuselage bolted to a shopfront and a Sunday street market. Walk the ship canal from here to Gas Works Park, a decommissioned coal gasification plant left standing on a lawn with the skyline across the water.

14. 14

    Seattle coffee - the roasteries behind the chain

    food

    The city that exported espresso to the world drinks better than its most famous export suggests. Capitol Hill, Ballard and Georgetown carry the serious roasters, several of them working out of former warehouses with the drum in the room, and the standard order is a straight shot or a cortado rather than anything syrupy. Ordering to sit in and reading for an hour is entirely normal behaviour here, particularly in the rain.

15. 15

    Volunteer Park - conservatory, water tower and a museum in the trees

    culture arts nature wildlife

    The green heart of Capitol Hill, laid out by the Olmsted brothers, with a Victorian glasshouse of palms and cacti, a brick water tower whose stairs deliver a free view over the city, and an art deco building holding the Asian art collection. A large black steel ring on the lawn frames the Space Needle almost exactly, which is not an accident anyone will admit to.

16. 16

    Lumen Field and T-Mobile Park - the stadium pair south of downtown

    culture arts

    Two stadiums stand side by side at the southern edge of the centre, within walking distance of Pioneer Square. The gridiron and football ground has a reputation as one of the loudest in world sport, thanks to a roof design that traps the crowd noise, while the baseball park next door has a retractable roof, a serious food scene by stadium standards and a view of the cranes. Match days flood the light rail and the bars around them.

Getting to & around Seattle

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