Lonely Planet Seattle , livre ebook

Seattle

Contents

Plan Your Trip

Welcome to Seattle
Seattle’s Top 10
What’s New
Need to Know
Top Itineraries
If You Like…
Month by Month
With Kids
Eating
Drinking & Nightlife
Entertainment
Sports & Activities
Shopping

Explore Seattle

Neighborhoods at a Glance
Downtown, Pike Place & Waterfront
Sights
Eating
Drinking & Nightlife
Entertainment
Shopping
Sports & Activities
Pioneer Square, International District & SoDo
Sights
Eating
Drinking & Nightlife
Entertainment
Shopping
Sports & Activities
Belltown & Seattle Center
Sights
Eating
Drinking & Nightlife
Entertainment
Shopping
Sports & Activities
Queen Anne & Lake Union
Sights
Eating
Drinking & Nightlife
Entertainment
Shopping
Sports & Activities
Capitol Hill & First Hill
Sights
Eating
Drinking & Nightlife
Entertainment
Shopping
Sports & Activities
The CD, Madrona & Madison Park
Sights
Eating
Drinking & Nightlife
Entertainment
Shopping
Sports & Activities
U District
Sights
Eating
Drinking & Nightlife
Entertainment
Shopping
Sports & Activities
Green Lake & Fremont
Sights
Eating
Drinking & Nightlife
Entertainment
Shopping
Sports & Activities
Ballard & Discovery Park
Sights
Eating
Drinking & Nightlife
Entertainment
Shopping
Sports & Activities
Georgetown & West Seattle
Sights
Eating
Drinking & Nightlife
Shopping
Sports & Activities
Day Trips from Seattle
Sleeping

Understand Seattle

Seattle Today
History
Way of Life
Music

Survival Guide

Transportation
Arriving in Seattle
Getting Around
Tours
Directory A–Z
Accessible Travel
Customs Regulations
Discount Cards
Electricity
Emergency
Etiquette
Insurance
Internet Access
Legal Matters
LGBTIQ+ Travelers
Marijuana
Medical Services
Money
Opening Hours
Post
Public Holidays
Safe Travel
Smoking
Taxes & Refunds
Telephone
Time
Toilets
Tourist Information
Visas
Volunteering

Behind the Scenes
Seattle Maps
Downtown, Pike Place & Waterfront
Pioneer Square, International District & SoDo
Belltown & Seattle Center
Queen Anne & Lake Union
Capitol Hill & First Hill
The CD, Madrona & Madison Park
U District
Fremont
Green Lake
Ballard & Discovery Park
Georgetown
West Seattle
Our Writer
Welcome to Seattle

Blink and it’s changed: Seattle is that ephemeral. Blending innovation and nature, it’s a city always marching forward.

Local Flavor
First time in Seattle? Make a beeline for its proverbial pantry: Pike Place Market. It was founded in 1907, and its long-held mantra of ‘meet the producer’ still echoes enthusiastically around a city where every restaurateur worth their salt knows the name of their fishmonger and the biography of the cow that became yesterday’s burgers. It doesn’t take long to realize that you’ve arrived in a city of well-educated palates and wildly experimental chefs who are willing to fuse American cuisine with just about anything – as long as it’s local.

A United States of Neighborhoods
Visitors setting out to explore Seattle should think of the city as a United States of Neighborhoods or – to put it in more human terms – a family consisting of affectionate but sometimes errant members. There’s the aloof, elegant one (Queen Anne); the social butterfly (Capitol Hill); the artistic, bearded one (Fremont); the effortlessly cool one (Ballard); the grizzled old patriarch (Pioneer Square) and the one who lives out of town (West Seattle). You’ll never fully understand Seattle until you’ve spent a bit of time with them all.

Micro-businesses
To outsiders, Seattle is an industrious creator of macro-brands. To insiders, it’s a city of micro-businesses and boundary-pushing grassroots movements. For proof, dip into the third-wave coffee shops, the microbreweries with their casual tasting rooms or the cozy informal bookstores that remain rock solid in a city that spawned Amazon. Then there are the latest national trends that Seattle has helped popularize: craft cider, weed dispensaries, specialist pie-makers, and vegan ice cream that’s actually good, to name a few. Hit the streets and you’ll see there’s far more to this city than Starbucks and Boeing.

A Walk on the Weird Side
Seattle’s current reputation as the town that spawned Amazon and Starbucks won’t give you the full picture of the city’s oddball cultural heritage. Crisscross its urban grid and you’ll find all kinds of apparitions: a rocket sticking out of a building; a museum built to resemble a smashed-up electric guitar; a statue of Lenin; a mural made of used chewing gum; and fish-tossing market traders. Need help acclimating? The city’s still-booming legal weed market will help you embrace your own weird side.

City skyline view from the Columbia Center | MATT MUNRO/LONELY PLANET ©

Why I Love Seattle
By Robert Balkovich, Writer
A friend once described Seattle to me as a ‘great northern city,’ and during a particularly cold February there I really learned what she meant. As much of a wonderland as it is in the summer, it’s a city built for the rain and gloom. Everything is matched to it: the concrete buildings, handsome craftsman homes, restaurants serving hearty food, the mountains that hide themselves on cloudy days, and the way the downtown streetlights blinking on in the fog feels as warming as slipping into one of the city’s ubiquitous cafes and lingering over a cup of coffee.
For more, see Our Writer
Seattle’s Top 10

Pike Place Market
1 Way more than just a market, 110-year-old Pike Place is a living community, a cabaret show, a way of life and an intrinsic piece of Seattle’s soul. Strolling through its clamorous, sometimes chaotic thoroughfares, you simply couldn’t be in any other city. There are fish that fly, shops that look like they’ve sprung from a Harry Potter movie, an art wall made out of chewing gum, and a multitude of lively old buskers jamming acoustic versions of Led Zeppelin songs outside the world’s oldest Starbucks. Pure magic.

CDRIN/SHUTTERSTOCK ©

Seattle’s Top 10
Space Needle
2 The city icon that is as synonymous with Seattle as the letters S-E-A-T-T-L-E was built for the 1962 World’s Fair by the architecture firm John Graham & Company, and in 2018 got a face-lift to bring it into a new era. Although it’s no longer Seattle’s tallest structure, one million annual visitors still squeeze into the Space Needle’s slick, speedy elevators to enjoy views that are best described as awesome. Granted, tickets are expensive and you’ll be elbow-to-elbow with tourists, but stop complaining and get in line: this is an essential Seattle pilgrimage.

LONNIE GORSLINE/SHUTTERSTOCK ©


Seattle’s Top 10
Museum of Pop Culture
3 Paying homage to the left-handed, guitar-burning musical genius that was Jimi Hendrix, the Museum of Pop Culture is the brainchild of Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen (with fabulously bizarre architecture by Frank Gehry). It’s an apt memorial to a region that has been a powerful musical innovator since the days of local boy Bing Crosby. Come and see the legends and how they were created, from Hendrix to Kurt Cobain, or experiment with your own riffs in the interactive Sound Lab. Marrying Captain Kirk with Nirvana Kurt is the on-site ‘Infinite Worlds of Science Fiction’ exhibit, where Star Trek meets Doctor Who.

LEMBI/SHUTTERSTOCK ©

Seattle’s Top 10
Puget Sound Ferries
4 Tap the average Seattleite about their most cherished weekend excursion and they could surprise you with a dark horse – a cheap and simple ride on the commuter ferry across Puget Sound to Bainbridge Island. There’s nothing quite like being surrounded by water and seeing Seattle’s famous skyline disappearing in the ferry’s foamy wake, the only commentary the cry of the seagulls and the only entertainment the comedic antics of escaping families bound for a day out on the nearby Olympic Peninsula.

CERI BREEZE/SHUTTERSTOCK ©

Seattle’s Top 10
Public Art
5 Seattle likes to display its art out in the open with no holds barred. Sculptures and statues decorate parks, streets and squares, from the weird (a stone troll underneath a bridge), to the iconic (Hendrix in classic rock-and-roll pose), to the existential (a group of people waiting for a bus that never comes). The city even has its own sculpture park, an outpost of the Seattle Art Museum that spreads its works across a beautifully landscaped outdoor space overlooking glassy Elliott Bay.

THE FREMONT TROLL BY SCULPTORS STEVE BADANES, WILL MARTIN, DONNA WALTER AND ROSS WHITEHEAD | SPOONPHOL/SHUTTERSTOCK ©


Seattle’s Top 10
Coffee Culture
6 Every rainy day in this city is just another opportunity to warm up with a cup of joe. Seattle practically invented modern North American coffee culture, thanks to a small store in Pike Place Market that went global: Starbucks. But, while the rest of the world has been quick to lap up the green mermaid logo, Seattle has moved on. Starbucks is merely the froth on the cappuccino in a city where hundreds of small-scale micro-roasteries, cafes, baristas and knowledgeable caffeine connoisseurs continue to experiment and innovate.

STARBUCKS RESERVE ROASTERY & TASTING ROOM | EDUCATION IMAGES/CONTRIBUTOR/GETTY IMAGES ©

Seattle’s Top 10
Capitol Hill
7 While other neighborhoods have their tourist shrines, Capitol Hill has its people and its culture – both thoroughly eclectic. Although the neighborhood has faced gentrification issues in recent years, its wonderfully offbeat soul is ever present. There are dive bars in old autoshops, cabaret venues where folks across the spectrum of gender and sexual identity perform to enthralled crowds, body-positive sex shops and enough vinyl and books to make you think that Amazon.com never happened. Welcome to Seattle’s most colorful ‘hood. Visiting isn’t an option – it’s a duty.

SEASTOCK/GETTY IMAGES ©