Six Things I Had to Do in Seattlefeatured

“You have to visit Seattle,” one of my friends had been telling me for months. “If you love San Francisco, you’ll love Seattle.”

Seattle was never a priority on my travel road map. At least, it wasn’t a priority over other uncharted territory (read: Europe) or my domestic mainstays (San Francisco, New York, SoFlo). So when I got sent out to Seattle on a short (last-minute) business trip a couple of weeks before we left for Europe, I rushed into Googling everything I had to see in Seattle and the smartest ways I could experience the must-do’s in an incredibly limited time frame.

I flew out to Seattle on early Tuesday morning and was on a plane home by Thursday evening, so I had less than 72 hours to get to know a city I’d never been to before — and I had to do it before, after and in-between full days of meetings each day I was there. But I was there long enough to learn a few key things: if you use an umbrella in light rain you’re obviously a tourist (and you’re lame), the city exudes it’s own brand of culture that is absolutely captivating and above all, that my friend was right: I absolutely loved Seattle.

So here are the six things I made sure I experienced while I was in Seattle:

Explore Pike Place Market and the Gum Wall

After a 4:00 am wake-up to catch a 7:00 am flight, four hours in air and then a half day of meetings, a big part of me wanted to draw the curtains and crash in my hotel room. Instead, I checked into the hotel, grabbed a map, freshened up and headed out towards Pike Place Market. The walk was slightly less than a mile, but what I didn’t realize is that Seattle, much like San Francisco, is a city of steep inclines.

It started to drizzle a bit during my walk down to the waterfront and I learned my second lesson: Seattle-ites are immune to the rain (probably in the same way I’m immune to ridiculous wind chills). No one was using an umbrella, so I quickly tucked away the umbrella I had taken out with me. The drizzle didn’t last long, anyways.

I passed a Starbucks as I was approaching the market, not realizing that it was the original Starbucks until I had left Seattle. So, if you’re visiting Seattle, the first Starbucks is right next to Pike Place Market.

The market was approaching closing time when I arrived, so I only really had time to browse. Pike Place is half farmer’s market, half flea market that feels like a merging of the Ferry Building in San Francisco’s Embarcadero and Barcelona’s La Boqueria. There are specialty food stalls, craft booths, fresh produce stands and, as it’s famous for, a thriving fish market.

It felt like everywhere I turned, there was something new to discover: an array of colorful, locally-grown fruits or an antique shop that smelled like the summer of 1998 (when I spent my allowance on incense at Rock America).

The market closes at 6:00 pm, so when the vendors started boarding up their stalls, I set out to find the Gum Wall. My sister was the one who told me I had to visit the Gum Wall. I didn’t know much about it but my iPhone was telling me it was a two minute walk from Pike Place Market. Unfortunately, walking directions on an iPhone aren’t always clear (or accurate, for that matter) and for the life of me, I couldn’t figure out how to find Post Alley (where the Gum Wall is). After 15 minutes of walking around aimlessly and muttering at my iPhone, I spied a sign for Post Alley. It’s literally down a ramp you’ll find at the entrance of Pike Place Market.

The Gum Wall is literally as it is named — a graffiti-covered wall where people stick their gum (or, more accurately, multiple walls spanning an entire alleyway). It sounds gross and in some respects, it is. But it’s art. People from across the world come to this one span of street and leave behind a piece of gum as a marker. Some in the form of a message or a figure and others in a literal gob of gum.

I searched through my bag for a stick of gum but must have stuck my pack of Rainbow Sherbet Extra in my suitcase. So I didn’t get to leave a piece of gum on the wall, but I paced the alley up and down and up again, taken by the colors, the graffiti, the words.

And then I Facetime’d my sister to let her know she was right — the Gum Wall was definitely worth seeing.

See the Skyline from the Space Needle

When we stepped off the plane in Seattle, my boss asked me if we really had to go into the office (“Yes, we really have to go into the office today.”). On our second day, after we both spent the entire day meeting with our Seattle-based teams, he insisted we do something touristy. The Space Needle is the icon of the city, so we hopped in an Uber.

The minute we stepped out of our cab, I felt like I was in Epcot. The Space Needle was built for the 1962 World’s Fair and feels every bit as futuristic as an observation tower built during the space race would feel. The observation deck is 500+ feet up on an elevator that travels at 10 miles per hour. From the top, you get a panoramic view of the city skyline and Puget Sound. On a good, clear day, you can see Mount Rainier.

You can probably buy tickets online. We bought ours through a kiosk at the entrance and we had a 15 minute wait before our designated elevator ride. At the top, you’ll find a restaurant and indoor and outdoor observation decks. We circled the outdoor deck, checking out every view and trying (in vain) to spot Mount Rainier.

The views were stunning (even if we couldn’t quite spot Mount Rainier) and, though not the largest of cities in the United States, the Seattle skyline boasts some impressive skyscrapers and a lovely cityscape.

Dine on International Cuisine

From the moment I stepped off the plane into the Seattle Tacoma Airport, one thing was clear: Seattle is very much a foodie city. Small, locally owned restaurants with colorful signs boasting unique takes on various cuisines lined every street I walked through.

Our Seattle office is located in between Pioneer Square and the International District, which left us with dozens of possibilities for lunch. I’d never had Vietnamese food before, so my boss insisted we get Pho (a traditional Vietnamese noodle soup). We found a restaurant in Pioneer Square called Pho Fuchsia that seemed popular and I settled in with a honeydew bubble tea as I carefully poured over the menu to choose from the dozen Pho options they had. I settled on some Meatball Noodle Pho and it was a perfect introduction to the cuisine. And my boss, the Pho connoisseur, enjoyed it so much that he insisted we return on our last day.

#Sports

Seattle is a city that loves its sports. Their baseball stadium even sits adjacent to their football arena. The Mariners were in town when we were visiting, so I suggested we do a team outing to a Mariner’s game. The Mariner’s aren’t a very good team this season (read: they have the fourth worst record in the American League), but they play in a great ballpark that’s incredibly modern. For this Chicago girl who takes in most of her baseball games at the antiquated Wrigley Field, experiencing a baseball game in a modern stadium was a lot of fun.

Take in the Views from Kerry Park

As I was boarding my flight to Seattle, my friend Keri texted me and told me to make sure I visited Kerry Park. Kerry Park is a lookout in Queen Anne Hill that has one of the best views of the Seattle skyline. I was going to visit with a couple of work friends who were also in town on business on my first night (where we ended up on a big multi-team outing to a Chicago bar to watch the Blackhawks game) and then on the second (but I was too exhausted to function). So on my last morning in Seattle, I took advantage of the fact that Seattle is two hours behind Chicago, so if I woke up at my usual 7:30 am, it was only 5:30 am Seattle time. One of my work BFF’s was also in Seattle to sync with his Seattle-based team and was staying in the same hotel as me, so we made a pact to take a pre-work excursion to visit Kerry Park.

We grabbed a quick breakfast in the concierge lounge (thanks for the upgrade, Marriott!) and hopped in an Uber at 7:00 in the morning. It was a quick ride — ten minutes or so — to a park on the far side of the city, up a hill off a quiet residential street.

The views from Kerry Park are unparalleled — you get a full, unobstructed view of the cityscape. On a clear day, you can see Mount Rainier, but as with the trip up the Space Needle, there were just too many clouds on this day. Visiting in the early hours of the morning was a necessity — I had some last meetings to fit in before my flight home — but it also worked out perfectly, as it was so early that we had the entire park to ourselves.

Drink A *Lot* of Coffee

Seattle may be known for many things (Pike Place Market, Skid Row, Grey’s Anatomy, Nirvana), but the city name may be synonymous with nothing more than it is with coffee. Seattle is the birthplace of Starbucks, but even on a business trip, I wanted to enact the no-restaurants-you-have-at-home rule (except for the magical Starbucks machine in the concierge lounge of my hotel that made all kinds of specialty beverages, because a machine with that many buttons just begs for someone to press all of the buttons, and I may have started the morning I flew home with a Chai Latte, an Americano and a shot of espresso from said machine and then had the caffeine shakes the entire flight home. Caffeine shakes + turbulence = 0 out of 5/would not recommend to a friend).

One of my friends who lives in Seattle brings me coffee from a different local coffeehouse every time she visits and I knew going into this that Seattle coffee was good coffee and I wanted as much of it as I could drink.

So every day I was in Seattle, I made sure to visit a different coffee place. Doppio con Panna at Zeitgeist, a hip coffeehouse in Pioneer Square. A brown sugar latte with the most amazing boysenberry sugar cookie at a place called Gossip in the International District (where I stopped in purely because the shop was called Gossip and I couldn’t not stop in).

I could have fueled the plane back to Chicago on the excess caffeine energy running through my veins alone (and, real talk, I do not recommend drinking so much caffeine that it gives you the shakes while you’re flying because the only way to make it better is to drink a lot of water and when the plane is shaking and you’re shaking and you’re drinking a lot of water and you can’t get up because the skies above Helena, Montana aren’t being friendly, it’s just not a good situation). But if you’re in Seattle, you have to get some coffee. Preferably in a place that isn’t Starbucks because no matter where you live, you probably have at least three Starbucks nearby.

Final Thoughts

Seattle has a lot of charm, even more personality and an inimitable vibe. The city is much smaller than the New York’s and Chicago’s of the U.S., but with that, it manages to condense it’s unique culture into every corner of the city. It may not have the bells and whistles of San Francisco or the trendiness of the up and coming nearby Portland, but the city is the perfect size for a short getaway or long weekend.

I’ll be back, Seattle. Sooner, probably, rather than later. Lets do coffee.