Seattle

Seattle, Washington, sometimes called the Emerald City, is the largest city in the Pacific Northwest.

The city is a green gem, with water and trees everywhere famed for its rainy weather, and on clear days, spectacular views of the Olympic Mountains across the Puget Sound to the west, and Mount Rainier and the Cascades to the east. Within the city limits, you will rarely be more than a mile or so from an espresso stand.

Districts

Seattleites nearly always describe a location in terms of its "neighborhood." This is partly because of a potentially confusing system of street addresses (see Get Around). The breakdown into neighborhoods is informal and mutates over time, and while there are often signs on major arterial roads to let you know that you are "entering" a particular neighborhood, the placement of these signs is arbitrary.

Still, knowing what neighborhood you're looking for can be a good sanity check when you're looking for an address. A Seattleite would describe 1401 45th SW as being in West Seattle, and 1401 45th NE as being in the U District (University District), which you'll note are diagonally opposite on the map. See Get Around for an explanation.

The Seattle City clerk maintains an interactive map that starts with the high-level districts, but lets you click on those to get the detailed neighborhoods too.

Some others that may crop up are:

Understand

Seattle was founded on the rough, physical industries of fishing, logging and coal mining, with San Francisco as her primary customer. Boeing was founded in 1916, and as natural resources were depleted, grew to be Greater Seattle's primary industry. The region's strong economic dependence on Boeing gave the oil recession and cancellation of the SST (Supersonic Transport) in the early '70s a grim effect. Over the last twenty-five years, the area has become less seedy and more developed with the massive influx of Microsoft money (and other software and biotech proceeds), but Pioneer Square is still the original Skid Row. (Myth says that Yesler Way was a "Skid Road" for logs being dragged downhill to Henry Yesler's lumber mill, although the mill was actually sited to take logs from Elliot Bay, not from inland).

Seattle is also substantially influenced by the presence of the University of Washington (the largest single campus on the west coast and one of the top two recipients of grant money), as well as multiple smaller colleges and universities. Seattle is also the center for financial, public health, and justice systems in the northwestern part of the USA.

Climate

The weather can be rainy (but is usually just drizzly) on any given day, even the Fourth of July. Mid-July through early September is often sunny, although the record high is only 100 degrees fahrenheit. The average high for August (the warmest month) is only 76 degrees. The short, dark and overcast winter days would be less bone-chilling if it snowed instead of drizzling at a few degrees above freezing. As long as you don't kill yourself in the winter, the long, incredibly pleasant summer days can make up for the depressing half of the year.

One interesting fact is that Seattle has less annual rainfall than New York City, however the rain is spread out over a larger number of days, so while NYC gets heavier downpours, Seattle suffers from an almost chronic drizzle which occasionally strengthens to a full-blown torrent. Because of this, you're far likely to encounter a sunny day in Seattle than in most of the US. On the plus side, this means the rain rarely presents a safety hazard other than the fact that local drivers seem to lose half their IQ points when so much as a drizzle hits.

Get in

By plane

Seattle-Tacoma International Airport, (Airport code: SEA), called "SeaTac" by locals, connects Seattle to all regions of the world, with especially frequent transpacific routes. Alaska Airlines provides something approximating discount air fare to and from the San Francisco Bay Area and Southern California. There are several choices for getting from the airport to the city center:

By train

Amtrak provides service from all along the west coast. The Amtrak Cascades runs three trains a day between Seattle and Portland (two run between Seattle and Eugene, Oregon, via Portland) and one a day to Vancouver, British Columbia. The service is quicker and much more reliable than the regular Amtrak trains, which can be delayed for hours on the long (over a day) trip from California.

Additionally, the Empire Builder provides daily service to Chicago via Minneapolis and Glacier National Park.

Seattle's King Street Station is located south of downtown, near Safeco Field.

By car

Interstate Highway 5 (I-5) cuts through the middle of Seattle North to South. Interstate 90 (I-90) runs from the I-5 interchange in Seattle all the way to Boston, Massachusetts.

By bus

Seattle's Greyhound bus station is located at the northeast edge of the downtown core.

By boat

Get around

Navigating

Seattle's street designations make sense once you understand them, but unless you do understand them, you can end up many miles away from your destination.

All North-South streets are labeled "Avenues" while East-West streets are labeled "Streets". The city is roughly divided into a 3 by 3 grid with nine directional sectors (i.e. N, S, NE, NW, etc.) Street addresses in each sector are written with the area name BEFORE the street's number, e.g. NE 45th Street or NE 45th. Avenue addresses in each sector are written with the area AFTER the avenue number, e.g. 45th Avenue NE or 45th NE.

There are four major exceptions:

#Downtown streets and avenues have no directional designation. #There is no SE section. Instead, the S section is extra wide. #East of downtown, avenues have no directional designation (streets are preceded by 'E'). #North of downtown (between Denny Way and the ship canal), streets have no directional designation, but avenues are followed by 'N'.

All in all, it's probably worth a few dollars to buy and carry a map when you're trying to find an address.

By bus

Metro Transit (electric or diesel city buses) actually works pretty well. The web trip planner is straightforward and accurate, as long as your bus is on time. On Saturdays and Sundays, you can buy an All-Day Pass for $2.50 from the bus driver. On weekdays, a $5 Visitor Pass can be purchased at various retail locations.

Buses in downtown Seattle are free between 6am and 7pm in the downtown core of Seattle. Just get on and get off. To read the details refer to Metro Free Bus info.

Sound Transit (diesel and hybrid buses, trains) is more expensive, but has many convenient express routes that travel South (to Tacoma), East (Redmond, Bellevue), and North (Bothell, Lynnwood).

If presented with multiple routes to get to the same destination, try and ascertain which routes use Hybrid Flyer buses, recognizable by the yellow rather than green route indicators. They have air conditioning unlike every other model Metro uses, which during Seattle's warm season will be quite useful. Generally the Hybrids are used on routes which go downtown, through the now out-of-service bus tunnel.

By car

On weekends, you can often rent cars at locations throughout the city for well under $20/day.

Flexcar has cars in many parts of the city, waiting for someone to pick them up, drive them around, and drop them back off. It's a cool idea, but it won't do you much good as a tourist, and rental cars are cheaper. Sorry!

Beware!

The parking enforcement in Seattle is a racket whose purpose is more to generate revenue than ensure safety. Be mindful of where you park, and read the signs carefully as the meter maids lie in waiting like snakes for you to make a single mistake, and the fines can be hefty! Near the end of a quota period a parking ticket can be in excess of $60 for simply going overtime in a 2-hour zone.

By bicycle

Bicycling is better than in most cities, except for the damp roads, frequent rain and San Francisco Jr. hills. Buy yourself some Gore-Tex raingear at REI's Flagship Store (222 Yale Ave). Many major roads in Seattle have properly maintained bicycle lanes, and drivers don't actively try to kill you as in some other major cities.

Bicycle transportation in the greater part of Seattle is facilitated further by the Burke-Gilman Trail. This is a paved walking/jogging/cycling trail that winds its way from the north end of Lake Washington, down around the University of Washington, then west towards Ballard. The trail is on an old railroad right-of-way, so it maintains a very consistent elevation and is excellent for commuting or a casual day's touring. Myrtle Edwards path is located on the sound starting at the north end of downtown and continuing for the most part all of the way to the Ship Canal Locks. It is much more scenic than the Burke.

All Metro buses are equipped to carry two bicycles on racks on the front, at no extra charge. Metro doesn't allow riders to load or remove a bicycle in the downtown Ride Free Area between 6am-7pm, although it doesn't hurt to ask if you've goofed.

See

Tours

Museums

Indoors

Outdoors

Parks

Do

Events

Cycling

Boating

Drink

Coffee

Seattle is the home of Starbucks, SBC (now owned by Starbucks), and Tully's, but there are over a hundred good locally owned coffeehouses. (Besides the places below, see the district articles.)

Bars and Taverns

In Washington, "bars" have a full liquor license, while "taverns" are restricted to beer, wine and cider.

See the district articles for listings.

Eat

See the district articles for more listings.

Seafood

Asian

For the best variety, head to the International District.

Mexican

Seattle is not known for Mexican food, but...

Vegetarian

Other

Budget

Mid-range

Get out

Boating

If you're staying anywhere near downtown, the ferries hardly seem like "getting out" since they leave from a pier at the south end of the waterfront, an easy and interesting walk from downtown.

Driving

Just getting out and driving around the area with no destination in mind can be a great experience, as the Seattle area, like most of the Pacific Northwest, is very scenic. If you'd like more specific destinations, try some of these:

Skiing/snowboarding

This text of this article is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 1.0. It has been slightly modified to fit the general design of this website. The authors of this document are Adam Jensen, Anonymous user(s) of Wikitravel, Casey Rogers, Dan Arnold, Evan Prodromou, Jack Fleming, James Blake, Keith K. Higa, Paul N. Richter, Ryan Holliday, Sandi Nack, Shawn Granton, Wikitravel user Chst, Wikitravel user DrAwesome, Wikitravel user Guanaco and the following WikiTravel users: Cjensen, DougEngland, Huttite, Hypatia, Ilkirk, InterLangBot, Jmabel, Maj, Matiasp, Mkuehn, Mnd, Nurg, Nzpcmad, PierreAbbat, Ravikiran_r, Sohcahtoa. The original version of this article can be seen at http://wikitravel.org/en/Seattle.