This post will review our day in Seattle! As mentioned in the previous post, we chose to fly into Seattle and then take the Bolt Bus to Vancouver before boarding the Disney Wonder cruise to Alaska! If you’re considering a similar plan and want to read more in-depth about the transportation options available from Seattle to Vancouver, click here.
Today was the day we had to embark on one of the greatest necessary evils in life – flying. To put it in modest terms, I dislike flying. To put it in more elaborate words, well just ask Joe about Colorado 2016. We’ll just say I learned quickly how to properly self-medicate in anxiety-provoking situations. Moving right along…
Our death trap, I mean our Boeing 747, took off at 7am EST and landed (safely!) at 11:30 EST, 8:30 PST. That three hour time change was great on the way there, not so much on the way home.
From the airport, we took Seattle’s public transit called the Link Light Rail to the University stop which was the closest stop to our hotel. Where we’re from, public transportation is a joke to put it nicely. So it was nice to have this option available and it was easy to find and use. I had mapped out the distance from each Link stop to our hotel so knew if we exited at University we’d be a quick walk away. It took about 30 minutes to get from the Sea-Tac airport to our hotel using the Light Rail.
We ended up scoring an awesome hotel deal on Hotwire for The W which is a great location downtown and is listed as a 4.5 star hotel. We found this kind of by luck during a Hotwire sale that was brief and lasted only a few hours. I came across it and snatched it up like a Be Our Guest dinner reservation. And at $128, similar in price to a Be Our Guest meal. For one.
Surprisingly enough, there are a ton of hotel options in a big city like Seattle. Of course, staying in the downtown area is going to cost you a bit more. For us, it was worth it especially since we got a good deal on our hotel to begin with. But we were budgeting a bit more to stay downtown anyway with our reasoning being that we were only there for one day, didn’t want to spend a lot of time traveling to and from the downtown area and just generally wanted to be around the downtown culture.
We arrived at The W sometime in the afternoon. Our room was ready so we dropped our stuff and headed to where we planned on grabbing some food. I had heard awesome things about a place called…well at risk of offending anyone I’ll refer to it here as Biscuit Female Dog if you catch my drift. This place was packed and you could easily turn into a Biscuit Female Dog yourself if you’re starving as it took us about 45 minutes to get our food after ordering. It was worth every minute though. I would highly recommend this place but to avoid turning into a hangry Biscuit Female Dog, try to arrive early in the morning or much later in the day.
We passed the “original” Starbucks which apparently isn’t technically the original Starbucks as the location changed at some point. That line was long enough that I’m pretty sure it’s treated as the original Starbucks anyway, at least to the tourists who need to get that Instagram picture. #originalStarbucks #notreally
We explored Pike Place Market for a while which we both really enjoyed. It was pretty busy being a Saturday but definitely worth checking out.
Joe and I are craft beer snobs or as Joe’s dad likes to put it, “crap” beer snobs. So of course we had to check out a Seattle brewery for some crap beer.
We had a really nice time here. It was pretty casual – you just kind of go up to the counter and order what you want and then bring it back to a table but it was nice. They did also have some food options too. I would recommend this place! It was easy to get to being right downtown and the craft/crap beer was great!
We walked around a bit more after this and decided to grab some craft/crap beer from a little shop downtown and take it back to our hotel room and hang out for a bit.
We had heard recommendations to go to Kerry Park while we were in Seattle. We grabbed an Uber there since it would have been about a 2.5 mile walk. I enjoyed Kerry Park for the views but I’m not sure I would go out of my way next time to go here. The views were very cool though! We just didn’t spend enough time here to really justify it.
The Space Needle was a little over a mile away from where we were at Kerry Park. We decided to walk over there. We even ran into a small bar on the way and of course stopped for a craft/crap beer. The area near the Space Needle was really cool! A different vibe than the Pike Place area and I’m glad we went. I do believe you could also walk here from the Pike Place area, being a little over a mile walk.
We briefly considered going to the top of the Space Needle until I remembered that I’m deathly afraid of heights. Joe didn’t even really try to push it. It wouldn’t have been an enjoyable experience for either of us, with me anxiously crying and Joe having to deal with me anxiously crying…
So we viewed it from the safe and stable ground.
One thing we did that we hadn’t really planned on but REALLY enjoyed was the Chihuly Garden and Glass Museum. Neither of us are super into art but we both enjoyed this a lot. The museum showcases the work of Dave Chihuly and it is very cool to walk through.
It was a little pricey at $24 plus tax per person. They also offer a package that includes your admission to the museum plus admission to the Space Needle observation deck for those without crippling anxiety about heights. That package is $38 per person plus tax. Admission to the Space Needle observation deck alone is $22 plus tax so you’re saving about $10 by purchasing the package.
Joe and I are big baseball fans and plan to go to every MLB stadium at some point so we figured we should probably go to a Mariners game while in Seattle. So we did exactly that this evening! We took an Uber to the stadium since we weren’t able to walk.
I hope this doesn’t offend anyone more than Biscuit Female Dog did but we didn’t have the highest opinion of Safeco Field. I think we were expecting the stadium to have more sweeping views of the mountains but they were kind of hidden with the way the stadium was laid out. We’re glad we knocked another stadium out of the park (…) though!
We were beat by the time we got back to the hotel. It was about 9:30 PST but it felt like 12:30am to us and we had been up since 3am our time.
We both really enjoyed Seattle. There was so much to do that we just didn’t have time for. Some other things to do that I’ve heard highly recommended in Seattle include The Museum of Flight, The Museum of Pop Culture, Discovery Park and Chittenden Locks. After our cruise and before our flight home, we also explored the area where the Seattle Great Wheel is and this was a cute little area too with kind of a boardwalk-type feel.
Spoiler alert: We both agreed we liked Vancouver just a little bit better overall compared to Seattle but it was very close!
Up next: Exploring Vancouver before we (finally) board the Disney Wonder to Alaska!
Love it! Can’t wait for more! 🙂