PNW Trip Report (Part 1: Awake in Seattle)
The Emerald City Shines
As your kids age, trips often start transitioning aware from nearby beaches and Disney World. They’re more adventurous, can largely take care of themselves, and can be more involved with trip planning. So as our older son approached graduating high school, we let him pick a destination for his final spring break with us. After gently steering him away from his first choice (Switzerland), he decided on the Pacific Northwest, and specifically wanted to hike through a rainforest.
I’d never been to the Pacific Northwest, and neither had our family. I’d personally been to Arizona and Utah, and both my wife and I have been to California and Alaska. My sons had never been further west than San Antonio, Texas. Being our first West Coast trip as a family, along with the rainforest in Olympic National Park, we wanted to roll in Seattle and Vancouver as well. Unfortunately due to both the time of year and limitations of having six full days, we could not add other places we would have liked, like Mount Rainier, North Cascades, and Victoria, British Columbia.
I won’t get into the details of trip planning, but as a week-long trip with multiple stops, this was a true “road trip” and entailed multiple stops, accommodations, and even modes of transportation beyond “planes, trains, and automobiles”. I’ll return to “lessons learned” in a future post in terms of trip planning, but I’ll focus on the actual trip here.
We only had about a day and a half in Seattle, but from my research that was enough to hit the main spots in the core of the city.
We arrived on a Sunday night and went straight to our hotel, the Sound Hotel by Hilton in the Belltown neighborhood adjacent to downtown. Because my previous employer preferred Hilton properties, and I had traveled extensively for that job, I tend to try to stay at good Hilton property to maintain and build up my points. More importantly, they provide a good range of properties across price points that fit my family’s needs - from a simple Hampton Inn to something more of a splurge like this one on vacation.
The hotel definitely a good pick - excellent service and location, and fit the bill for a comfortable, central location for all we wanted to see in Seattle without needing a car. While the vibe of the hotel leans “techy business”, which isn’t surprising as it’s in basically the same neighborhood as Amazon’s headquarters, the service was very friendly and attentive. It reminded me that otherwise business-oriented city hotels can sometimes be of great value to traveling families.
We also did not have a car at this point on our trip. Parking at big city downtown hotels can get expensive especially with valet-only options. While there’s always Uber/Lyft in case we needed it, the Seattle region is blessed with very good transit options. We deliberately planned our trip so that we only got a rental car when we absolutely needed one towards the end to visit Olympic National Park. So it was basically a mini “single base” while we were in Seattle.
Day 1: Pike Place, Bainbridge Island, and Space Needle
We started the day with breakfast at Dahlia Bakery near our hotel. One of the nice things staying in a desirable, close-in urban neighborhood in Seattle is there were plenty of good breakfast and coffee options, and easily searchable on Google Maps with good reviews.
Stop 1: Pike Place Market
In the city, we only had two “must see” areas: Pike Place Market, including the Gum Wall, and the Space Needle at Seattle Center. Luckily our hotel was located smack between the two and we could either walk or take public transportation between them.
Pike Place Market was our first stop, and as you’ll understand, it wouldn’t be our last. The big thing to me was it’s really a public market, not just an “urban renewal festival marketplace” I was kind of expecting. I’d was imagining this was Seattle’s version of Chicago’s Navy Pier or Baltimore’s Inner Harbor. Those in my mind are borderline “tourist traps” and not anything particularly special.
Pike Place on the other hand, for whatever reason, has stayed true to being a marketplace for a variety of local businesses, and not just selling trinkets to tourists. There are artists, produce vendors, record stores, jewelry shops, and small restaurants. There’s enough shared space for walking and sitting and eating that you can move around, stop to grab a bite, or just enjoy people/scenery watching. My sense is that however the ownership and management of the market is set up, they have taken great care to support these businesses. It definitely felt like a place where daily commerce happens, not merely tourism or shopping. Especially coming out of the pandemic, it was pleasant to see a central city location vibrant with activity.
There are so many good businesses to visit and buy from, I can’t really really recommend any particular one, but the artwork, fresh produce, and baked goods were a joy to view and buy. The best part was being able to interact with humans behind the counters - there was little of the “flip an iPad and guilt you into a tip” experience here.
The Gum Wall was also fun - not only for the spectacle of countless gum “art” on an old brick wall, but also how it’s tucked almost underneath Pike Place. The whole area is very “vertical” with multiple levels going from the waterfront up towards the start of downtown. Even better was Ghost Alley Espresso in the corner of the Gum Wall area. Again, very much not a tourist trap location - it was staffed by a very friendly employee who could have a conversation and make recommendations. The flavors were unique but not too gimmicky.
Stop 2: Bainbridge Island
As we were done with Pike Place fairly early mid-day, and had time before we wanted to hit the Space Needle in the evening (my son wanted sunset photos from there), we decided to squeeze in a visit to Bainbridge Island. It’s a about a 30 minute ferry ride from the downtown Seattle ferry terminal. That itself is was a great experience, with a very well-run ferry operation by Washington State’s Department of Transportation, and clear weather giving us spectacular views of the Seattle skyline to the east, and the Olympic Mountains to the west.
Bainbridge Island can, on one level, be described as an upscale inner suburb with a very nice town center, which many large American cities have. What’s different here is that it’s both recommended for tourists to visit, but didn’t feel particularly touristy. Much like Pike Place Market, I felt a well-preserved balance between commerce and community. It was also here that I generally started to feel there was something of a “Pacific Northwest Hospitality”, which I had not been expecting. While it’s not the same as the South where I live, or the Midwest where I’m from, there is a friendliness to the area and the businesses we visited.
We strolled around downtown Bainbridge Island, and while it’s not a particularly distinctive set of mostly mom-and-pop shops and restaurants, it was a pleasant contrast with the dense bustle of central Seattle. Considering the short and convenient ferry ride, it was a nice break. We had lunch at Thuy’s, a Vietnamese restaurant that also served boba tea (my younger one’s favorite beverage). My sons shared pho and I had a tofu bahn mi sandwich. We all shared spring rolls as well. The weather was beautiful with temperatures in the 60s and clear skies, so we enjoyed outdoor seating.
Bainbridge Island wasn’t particularly planned, but I head read about it during my research, and since we had time to kill before heading back to Seattle, it was nice to walk around the businesses and waterfront without much care. The ferries are frequent enough that we just had to time our walk back to the ferry terminal accordingly. I’d definitely recommend a visit as it’s not difficult to squeeze in and is a nice contrast to urban Seattle.
Between Stops 2 & 3: Easy Getting Back, But Some Challenges Then
We made our way back to Seattle later that afternoon on the same ferry, with enough time for an evening sunset visit to the Space Needle. Our plan was to walk back through or around Pike Place and up through downtown to the monorail station. The monorail is basically just a 2-stop short ride between downtown and Seattle Center where the Space Needle is, and built specifically for the 1962 World’s Fair, so it’s separate from the much rail transit systems the region has built much more recently.
This seemed easier at first with a quick check of Google Maps showing a 20 minute walk, but I made the mistake of trying to follow the waterfront and trying to cut over to the west uphill towards the Westlake Center (Mall)-based monorail station. Alaskan Way, the main thoroughfare along the waterfront, has a lot of construction going on and with the uphill terrain on the other side, a lot of crossing points ended up not being there, and we had to basically walk up through Pike Place Market anyways.
On top of that, once we did make it across, my younger son had to go to the bathroom. This is where the current reality of a lot of urban locations closing their public restrooms (ostensibly due to homelessness) became a real challenge. Pike Place does have numerous public restrooms but the entire place is closed after 5pm. We went to at least 3 different places, including a Chipotle and an urban Target/CVS, none of which had a public restroom. Once we reached Westlake Mall, we again found it was closed. The final saving grace though, was an Asian food court in the Mall’s ground level, and a nice gentleman was willing to give us the restroom code without any purchase. My wife and older son later found us and we all were able to use it before heading to the monorail station.
I will say, although Seattle is much cleaner and pleasant than some in the media and public perception maybe make it out to be, these particular few blocks did indeed have a lot of homelessness (including a strong police presence attempting to resolve individual issues) and a strong smell of weed. To me the lesson here was to be sure to use restrooms when and where you can in and around a US downtown, and understand you may encounter less-than-pleasant urban experiences, even if in a smaller dose than public perceptions.
Stop 3: Space Needle
We finally made to the Westlake monorail station around 7pm, and it was straightforward to purchase a ticket. The trains run around every 10 to 15 minutes, so even though we’d just missed one, the wait wasn’t long.
Once the train arrived and we boarded, you could feel the retro-futurism of it, much like an old Disneyland monorail from around the same time. You can see through the corners of the ceiling to the sky. With only 2 stops along a short, almost walkable distance, and a transportation technology that’s never scaled to local and regional transit systems, this is basically a tourist shuttle, though a fun one.
Purchasing tickets was very easy as they have ATM-like kiosks right outside the entrance. I can’t recall the price, but they are not cheap, but as probably THE signature attraction of the city, it’s not surprising. We’d committed to visiting, and didn’t want to pre-pay or lock in a specific timeslot in advance, so we were fine considering it was convenient with the kiosk.
Once we entered at the base of the tower, it was the typical queueing around a gift shop that was reminiscent of the setup we experienced several years ago at the (much taller) CN Tower in Toronto. Although there was a wait and a line to go up the elevator, it was not much considering we were just walk-up customers.