Seattle

My husband Keyur and I currently reside in the city of Seattle. We are both from the sunny state of Florida.

Washington is a state of natural beauty, yummy restaurants, tasty brews and wineries. If you plan to visit, here are a few tips to make your stay pleasant and successful!

Depending on how adventurous you plan to be you can spend a few days to weeks here. Some of our favorite things to do include taking hikes in the Cascades. These hikes can be anywhere from 2-8 miles round trip for stellar views. Some of the ones we have done include: rattlesnake ledge, little Si and Mt. Si, Otter Falls, Chirico Trail, they tend to be medium intensity hikes. A few that we hope to hit up soon are Snow Lake, Lake 22, and Granite Falls. All sorts of folks are out on the trails, so don’t be intimidated, give it shot! A good website to get more info on trails is: http://www.wta.org/. If you just want a nice view, minus the hike, Snoqualmie Falls is located in this area and well worth the stop over.

If you are willing to drive a ways, you can always go to Mt Rainier and Mt St Helens National Parks for some breathtaking views. If you don’t want to necessarily hike these you can hit up the visitor centers. It is difficult to visit both centers in one day. You can take a local ferry, either one from Anacortes or the Victoria Clipper from downtown, to go to Orcas Island for some whale watching or spend a day in the capitol city of Victora. The Victoria Clipper is convenient as it picks you up and drops you off at Pier 69 and takes a whole day to do. If you visit Seattle in April, you could travel north to Mt Vernon to check out the Tulip Festival. Leavenworth, a small German town 2 hours west of Seattle, is a great stop over if you plan to go white water rafting in the summer months or on your way to Lake Chelan to have some fun in the sun. Eastern Washington is completely different than western, it is almost dry/dessert like and this is where a lot of the grapes come for Washington wines. Eastern Washington tends to be warmer in the summer and gets more snow in the winter than we see on our side.

Some local sites that are a must include: a view of the city and sound from Kerry Park, and a visit to Pikes Place Market. You have to make a trip around the shopping district downtown which extends from 1^st ave to 7^th ave between Pike and Pine to include Nordstroms Flagship store, a huge Macys, a great Banana Republic located in an old theater and Pacific Place. If you plan to stay in the downtown area, renting a car is not necessary. In fact, from the airport you can catch the Light Rail which will drop you down town in ~40 minutes. There are the usual options such as the super shuttles and or cabs which run about $40 from the airport to downtown Seattle. You can than take the local buses to get around or even walk to get to the main sites once you are settled. The buses that run in the main downtown core from Battery St. to S. Jackson St. on the south, and east at 6th Avenue to the waterfront on the west from 6 am – 7 pm daily are FREE! You can get more info on the King County Metro site. If you later decide you want to rent a car, you have the option of renting a Zip Car for the day to venture outside of the city limits.

Seattle is full of history, you can take the underground tour: http://www.undergroundtour.com/ or Ride the Ducks for a quick look at what Seattle has to offer. There is always the iconic Space Needle and the SAM (Seattle art museum) located downtown. If you are interested in planes, Boeing offers a great 1 hour tour at their Everett Campus and has a newly renovated visitor center, I recommend reserving this in advance. Microsoft has a visitor center but you must go with an employee. We recently rented a boat with friends through Joyful Adventures. Joy is a local entrepreneur who has a “boat and breakfast” business on this fabulous boat which not only has a BBQ, a hot tub, but a fun slide from the top to through you into the cool Lake Washington waters. We had a great time doing this and hope to do it again in the future.

Seattle is broken up into neighborhoods which all have a unique sense of style and culture. We live in the Ballard neighborhood, an old Scandinavian Fishing town with great pubs, restaurants, the fishing locks and if you’re lucky catch a view of some of the boats from Discovery Channel’s “Deadliest Catch.” A few of our favorite restaurants and bars in Ballard include Matador and Senior Moose Café, both Mexican hot spots along with Volterra, a pricey but featured food network Italian restaurant. Kings Hardware has a great hazelnut beer and bloody mary and if you need, you can get a haircut next door before happy hour. Moshi Moshi Sushi, Sam’s Sushi, Monkey Bridge and Root Table all have Asian flare to them and have not only great menus but affordable happy hours. Great brunch spot include Portage Bay and the Hi Life, which is an old firehouse converted into a restaurant. The list is endless in Ballard.

A few of the other neighborhoods to check out include West Seattle, where our beautiful Alki Beach is located. Wallingford, Fremont, and Pioneer Square all have a flare and style of their own. A few great eats scattered throughout the area include: Café Bizzaro, Cactus, Tamarind Tree, Delancys and the Walrus and the Carpenter.

Around the city, some great restaurants include Matts in the Market, Beechers for their famous Mac and Cheese and Piroshky Piroshky all located in the market along with the first Starbucks. Purple and Sip wine bars are popular joints along with Petra Mediterranean restaurant. In the neighborhood of Queen Anne you have Toulis Petit, a fantastic brunch spot, and Racha Thai Food. Up on Capitol Hill you can have some drinks at the Saint, or eat at La Bete and a few tasty Italian restaurants on the hill include Via Tribunalli and Ristorante Machiavll. You cannot go wrong by going to any of the Tom Douglas restaurants or for that matter any restaurant in the South Lake Union Area of downtown Seattle.

Seattle is an amazing city, the list of things, places to visit or eat at are endless, if you have specific questions, please leave comments and I will try to answer ASAP. I will be adding to this post as time goes on and we get more adventurous!