[2024] Is Seattle Worth Visiting? A City Explorer Answers.
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Washington was my 29th state.
Having resided in Portland for four years, I had been to Seattle a couple times before my official "visit all 50 states" journey.
I would still describe Seattle as "Portland if it grew up".
This isn't to disparage Portland. Portland is like a "big small town" whereas Seattle is a big city with a little extra quirk sprinkled in.
Seattle reminded me a bit of Minneapolis-- just swap the Bob Dylan and Prince honorifics with Jimi Hendrix and Nirvana.
So, is Seattle worth visiting? Yes-- and to get your money's worth, I advise staying for a mininum for three days. Although it's not in the top ten for largest U.S cities, Seattle is still a fairly large city!
Pike Place, the Space Needle, and going to the oldest operating Starbucks (but not technically the first location) are Seattle essentials. There is still far more of you to see and do in this pretty Pacific Northwest metropolis.
Time for me to show you a good amount of what "grown-up Portland" has to offer!
[2024] Is Seattle Worth Visiting? A City Explorer Answers!
Seattle's most famous attractions
The first place in downtown Seattle I'd recommend you check out is Pike Place-- and with all the people walking around, it's nearly impossible to miss! You can also knock out two other "must-do" things in Seattle while exploring the area.
Pike Place is Seattle's most popular spot. In terms of the volume of people at any given moment, it's very similar to Times Square in New York City or Bourbon Street in New Orleans.
As I did above, lots of people stop and take a picture of the 'Public Market Center' letters which face 1st Avenue.
The streets in Pike Place are paved with brick, with both tourists and locals freely strolling on the red pavement. Vehicles can drive on them too. I wish there were signs that limited the street to only trucks-- for stocking the vendors-- and not pedestrian vehicles.
On each side of the street are plenty of local merchants selling the freshest seafood, baked goods, and vegetables. It's essentially a large farmer's market that also has restaurants and bars on the same strip.
You don't have to purchase anything to enjoy Pike Place. The energy of the people and photo opportunities of the area make Pike Place an essential Seattle thing to do.
Walk down to Post Alley to find one of the most eccentric, rebellious, unique and alluring attractions that makes Seattle special...
I present to you: the Gum Wall!
Here's another picture I took of the Gum Wall at the same spot-- just with some bumper stickers and graffiti above!
The Gum Wall is a narrow alleyway with tens of thousands of pieces of chewed up gum stuck to the walls from top to bottom. It started out in the early 1990's when two performers stuck their gum to the wall. People quickly followed suit and soon, Seattle's most offbeat public art project was born!
Given the range of flavors gum can come in, the Gum Wall has a variety of color! I especially liked that aspect of it.
Further down Pike Street is the world's oldest operating Starbucks. Many people believe this spot is the coffee corporation's first location.
This is technically not correct!
The address of the first Starbucks location was actually at 200 Western Ave. However, the building which housed the original location was demolished. The store moved to 1912 Pike Place-- the address it is at today.
I was not willing to potentially wait 30+ minutes just for Starbucks-- especially because there is another Starbucks on 1st Avenue-- right across the street from the 'PUBLIC MARKET CENTER' sign that hardly has a line (that rhymed)!
If you're not a fan of Starbucks but still want to visit a cafe, well, I promise you there is no shortage of places that serve coffee in Seattle!
Residents of Portland and Seattle loved to engage in heated debacle who has the superior coffee. As I am no coffee conoseuir, I have no insight on the matter. I prefer tea to coffee, anyway.
One more thing to look for while you're in Pike Place: a "hidden" Italian restaurant!
This sort-of-Seattle secret was the first restaurant I dined at when I originally visited Seattle in 2018. It's called the Pink Door.
What makes the eatery covert is that there is no sign with the restaurant's name. To find the establishment, you have to walk down Post Alley until you find a literal salmon-pink colored door.
The food at the Pink Door is superb but it also can be very expensive. This place can charge over $500 for a single glass of wine.
Even if you don't dine here, looking for the door is still something fun to do-- because trust me, I've done this twice and it still took me several minutes to locate it!
Another thing I did during my maiden trip to Seattle in 2018 was ride the Seattle Great Wheel. I took this photo during my revisit in the daytime. The ferris wheel looks far more pretty at night, as it is lit up by over a hundred thousand LED lights.
Tickets for an adult run $20. What's incredible about the ticket is that they are not date nor time specific. The ticket is valid up to one year after purchase!
The views of Puget Sound and downtown you get from inside a cart of the Seattle Great Wheel are very much worth it!
When you traverse downtown Seattle on foot, you'll find that many of the streets are rather steep! Walking uphill several blocks can get tiring!
The reason I bring this up now is I especially noticed the difficulty in walking uphill from the Seattle Great Wheel to the Seattle Central Library!
Now, you may be thinking why I was even walking to a library when I was on a trip in the first place!
The Seattle Central Library is an architectural gem and it's only by entering the library you can fully appreciate the building's aesthetic. Since it is a library, it is free to enter and explore every floor.
On the tenth floor, there is a spot where you can lean over a rail and peer down the library. It is the highest viewpoint in the library and is clearly labeled as such.
Ten stories doesn't sound like a lot, but when you look down, you realize how high up it actually is! I couldn't stare at it for longer than a second!
You can also get some elevated views of downtown through the diamond patterned wall. This was easier for me to do!
Last on the list for some of Seattle's best attractions is their iconic landmark. Just like the Gateway Arch of St. Louis or the Statue of Liberty of New York City, there is the...
... Space Needle of Seattle!
Now, before you go booking tickets to see the Space Needle, you should look into getting the Seattle CityPASS. Unfortunately, I learned about this after paying full price for two attractions so I'm hoping you don't make the same mistake I did!
You're welcome.
By getting a CityPASS, you'll save close to 50% by collectively booking tickets for the Space Needle, as well as other notable attractions like the Museum of Pop Culture and the Chihuly Garden and Glass-- two attractions I will elaborate on later!
The most fun part of entering the Space Needle is the opportunity to ascend to the top of the tower, where the floor and walls are all transparent glass. It's akin to the experience you get going to the top of the Sears Tower in Chicago.
You can lean your back against angled see-through glass on the observatory. This is a very popular photo opportunity. There is also another section down below where the floor slowly rotates. You can sit down on the floor and peer down to the city below as it slowly spins!
To prevent this section from being too lengthy, I'm going to devote a separate section to three museums you should visit during your Seattle getaway!
Some of Seattle's best museums
Like coffee shops, there is an abundance of museums for you to see in Seattle. In this article, I'm going to mention three of them.
The first of the Seattle museum trio is the Museum of Pop Culture-- conveniently located right by the Space Needle! I find often in big cities, several top attractions tend to be in close proximity to one another.
Such is the case with the Space Needle and the Museum of Pop Culture.
The Museum of Pop Culture mostly focuses on film, music, and video games that have had significant impact on mainstream culture.
For instance, regarding film, you can see costumes of Darth Vader and one of the Batman costumes from the 1990s behind glass. There are also two separate exhibits in a lower level of the museum: one devoted to sci-fi and one centered around horror.
For music, I was pleased to find an entire exhibit honoring Nirvana. You'll see a bunch of rare photos of the band, including photos of each band member, some of the instruments they used, some original copies of letters the band wrote, and some clothes worn by Kurt Cobain.
As you may have been wondering, yes, there was also an exhibit built for Jimi Hendrix, as well!
Last, for video games, there was a room centered around the indie game scene. Scattered throughout the museum too were collections of video game controllers. Also, there was a mural of World 8-2 from the first Super Mario Bros game on the NES.
The second museum, which also happens to be very close to the Space Needle, is the Chihuly Garden and Glass museum.
Nearly every sculpture inside the Chihuly Garden and Glass museum is worth taking a picture of! The museum is also rather small. I'll only post one more image from it, as I don't want to spoil the whole museum for you!
As a reminder, I would encourage you to get the CityPASS, as I feel the price point for the museum itself-- considering its small size-- is a bit high.
For the third and final museum, we have the Seattle Art Museum. It is located only a few minutes walk from Pike Place!
I'll just show you some art inside the museum I found most intriguing.
The inclusion of the Seattle Art Museum is a great segue into often my favorite section to write about for any 'Is X Worth Visiting' article: the public art & murals!
Public art & murals
Nearly every mural, sculpture, or building included in this section can be found in either the downtown or uptown (a.k.a Lower Queen Anne) neighborhoods of Seattle.
First, I'll show some murals.
Pictured above is a mural I found in downtown, close to Pike Place, off 2nd Avenue. This same block had some other really well-done murals as well!
Like this one...
... and also, this one.
Here is an image of the mural without me standing in front of it for a selfie...
The entrance/exit to the Westlake Station for the 1 Line train is fully painted and was used as the lead image for this article.
Here is a picture showing more of the station and the mural.
Last, here is a mural I was fond of adjacent to a parking lot in downtown. Parking lots are common spaces for mural artists to complete their work.
Now, I'm moving over to sculptures and statues!
Perhaps the most famous statue in Seattle is the Jimi Hendrix statue. It is located near the intersection of Broadway and Pine at 1604 Broadway.
There is a free sculpture garden in uptown between the Space Needle and the Chihuly Garden and Glass museum.
In downtown, 4th Avenue had a few cool sculptures! Here are two of them:
To wrap up this section, here are two pictures from Seattle's public city park, Pioneer Square.
There is a similarly named public park in Portland, colloquially also called 'Pioneer Square', though its correct name is Pioneer Courthouse Square. For what it's worth, I think the Pioneer Square in Seattle is prettier!
Seattle has abundant public transit
Seattle is a city you do not need to rent a car for, as there is widely available public transportation. For instance, to get from SeaTac to my hotel in downtown, I used the 1 Line train.
To commute from downtown to uptown, I either used the 1 Line train or the Seattle Center Monorail.
There were some cases where I did not feel like waiting for the public transportation and relied on Lyft instead.
Conclusion
Although I had a friendly Lyft driver recommend the Fremont neighborhood of Seattle to me, I did not have enough time nor energy to go there. But next time? Yes!
Seattle's downtown and uptown districts contain enough to keep you busy for a couple days. Pike Place, the Gum Wall, and the Seattle Central Library are all free to explore and provide some of the best photo opportunties in the city.
Leaning against the angled transparent glass on top of the Space Needle is an experience you can't miss out on. And don't forget to ride the Seattle Great Wheel at nighttime!
So, is Seattle worth visiting? Yes-- and I am looking forward to visiting again at some point in the future. I hope my article has convinced you as well that Seattle is one of the neatest cities on the west coast!
Thank you for reading! Like... seriously. So many people just skim sh*t and don't read anything past the headline. You're one of the good ones!
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