Visiting Seattle

How I spent 2 days in Seattle

While in the US for a trip to Alaska, we decided to first spend some time in the Pacific Northwest.

It was our first time visiting the state of Washington. We arrived at Seattle’s King Street Station early evening having travelled on the Amtrak from our first trip destination, Vancouver. Finding city center prices skyhigh in July, we instead had to stay at a hotel out at SeaTac airport. We easily found our way from King’s Street Station to the Light Rail station and it was about a 20 minute connection to the airport. Our hotel was walkable from the station but as it was already getting late at this point, we decided it wasn’t worth going back into the city that evening. Instead there were plenty of chain restaurants in the area so we headed to a nearby Denny’s for dinner.

The next day we were up early and after breakfast at the hotel, walked back to the station to catch the Light Rail back into the city and start exploring.

Walking down towards the waterfront, we were shocked to realise just how hilly the city is. We spent some time taking a walk along Seattle’s picturesque waterfront, stopping to shop in some of the many souvenir stores and passing Pier 57 and the Seattle Great Wheel then made our way to Pike Place Market and the Original Starbucks store. Though neither of us drink coffee, Starbucks is always a frequently visited place for us on any of our trips to the US as it’s one of the few places where we can get a proper cup of hot English Breakfast tea!! So we just had to visit the Pike Place Store!

There was quite a queue to enter the store but we willingly joined it. Staff members handed out laminates showing some of the souvenir items that could be purchased inside and if you didn’t want to purchase a drink, it was possible to go in without queuing just to see these and look inside! Once inside we got our cups of tea and had a look around before carrying on with our day.

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Next up was Pike Place Market itself with it’s iconic red sign and clock face. We had a quick walk around the stalls there, soaking up the atmosphere.

After looking around the market, we walked to the nearby Gum Alley. This odd, and pretty disgusting!, tourist attraction is exactly what it sounds like, a dark alley leading away from the market where the walls are absolutely covered in discarded chewing gum. We had come prepared, buying a packet of bubble gum from a nearby news store earlier that day, and added our own piece of chewed gum to one of the few spaces left! Then, as it was lunch time, we headed back to Pike Place Market and bought a corn on the cob each as a snack.

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From the market, we walked back towards the station and the Westlake Center, a huge mall, for a bit of shopping and a post lunchtime snack of Mrs Field’s cookies. Then we caught the light rail back a stop to the Pioneer Square area where we walked to Occidental Square, strolled through the Waterfall Garden Park, past Smith Tower – the oldest skyscraper in the city – and visited the Klondike Gold Rush National Historic Park Museum.

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With still plenty of our day left, we signed up for a Seattle DUCK Tour. Our crazy tour guide took us around the city telling us facts about it between blaring out a variety of pop tunes and making us quack on our duck quackers everytime we passed a Starbucks – there was a lot of quacking! Then, our vehicle became a boat as we took a trip across Lake Union before returning to dry land again.

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That evening, we were hoping to take a trip up Seattle’s famous Space Needle so after our DUCK tour, we caught the monorail to Seattle Center. When we got there, we found a big food festival event was on bringing huge crowds to the area and tickets to the observation deck were sold out for the day. Disappointed, we booked a slot for a few days later but thought we might as well have a walk around the food festival and sample a few freebies while we were there!

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As the sun was starting to set, we caught the train back towards the airport and walked back to our motel. The next day we would have a very early start as we’d be taking a tour to Olympic National Park so we decided against a late night in the city! You can read about my trip to Olympic National Park here.

Day 3 of our Seattle and after a fun day trip to Olympic National Park, today we’d be spending another day in Seattle city. We began the day with a Seattle Underground Tour. This tour had come highly recommended to us as a ‘must do’ city experience but we were left disappointed as there was little to see and our guide’s humour repeatedly fell flat. Still it was at least interesting to hear some of the city’s history.

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After our tour, we returned briefly to the Pike Place Market area to have lunch at a cafe we had spotted a couple of days before – The Crumpet Shop! As Brits, Crumpets are a staple of our breakfast but we had never seen them in the US so it was nice to find an unexpected home comfort in the middle of Seattle. The cafe offered a huge menu of both sweet and savory toppings on their homemade crumpets and although it was a difficult decision, I went for a savoury butter and cheese topping with, of course, a nice cup of tea!

Lunch done, we caught the monorail back to Seattle Center and went to visit the Museum of Popular Culture. This museum was right up my street with a collection of music and film memorabilia. I loved the Fantasy Films exhibition with the original costumes from classic films such as The Wizard of Oz and The Princess Bride and seeing props from Star Wars in the Sci-Fi exhibition. They even had Gizmo from Gremlins and the saw from the original Saw film in the Horror area! Many of the exhibitions were interactive so as big kids, the museum kept us entertained for hours. A highlight was making our own music video, pretending to play instruments and rock out to I Love Rock n Roll!

By the time we had finished at the museum, it was almost time for our pre-booked time slot for the Seattle Space Needle Observation Deck. We grabbed a quick bite to eat at MOD pizza in the Seattle Center food court then went to check in with our observation deck tickets.

We’d picked a good time to go up to the viewing deck as the sun was just starting to go down over the city. The earlier cloud and rain had cleared leaving a beautiful evening to take in the views over the city from the iconic building.

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From Seattle Center, we headed back towards the airport and our hotel for another early night in preparation for another early morning and national park trip the next day. For our final day in Seattle, we would be taking a tour out to Mount Rainier National Park.

You can read about my trip to Mount Rainier National Park here.

On our final day in the city, we’d be catching an late morning train to the city of Portland so after breakfast it was back to Kings Street Station to check in for our journey.

It had been a fun few days in the city and I’d definitely like to visit again in the future!

Watch my vlog of my trip to Seattle here: