SEATTLE · WASHINGTON
Salt water, coffee and a mountain on the skyline.
Pike Place mornings, Puget Sound cruises and the buried city beneath Pioneer Square. Mount Rainier, the Olympic rainforest and Snoqualmie Falls, each a day trip from downtown.
Only here
Three things you can only do in Seattle.
Plenty of cities have a market and a tower. Only Seattle lets you walk the streets of a city buried under its own sidewalks, eat through the market that started it all, and stand under a glacier-capped volcano before dinner.
The buried city
Seattle Underground
After the fire of 1889 the city rebuilt one storey higher, leaving the original ground floors and sidewalks sealed beneath Pioneer Square. Guides walk you through the brick passages and storefronts still down there in the dark, a whole street level you would never know you were standing on.
- 1 Beneath The Streets Underground History Tour
- 2 Seattle: Guided Underground Walking Tour
- 3 Haunted Seattle Booze and Boos Ghost Walking Tour
Since 1907
Pike Place Market
The oldest continuously running public market in the country is still a working one: fishmongers throwing salmon over the counter, the first Starbucks across the cobbles, piroshky and fresh doughnuts down the back stairs. A chef-led crawl is the way to eat your way through it without missing the good stalls.
- 1 Chef Guided Food Tour of Pike Place Market
- 2 Pike Place Market Tasting Tour
- 3 Early-Bird Tasting Tour of Pike Place Market
The mountain
Mount Rainier
Rainier is an active 14,410-foot volcano that hangs on the skyline on a clear day and sits two hours from downtown. A day trip takes you up through old-growth forest to Paradise, the wildflower meadows and the glaciers, then back to the city by dark.
- 1 Mt. Rainier National Park Highlights Tour
- 2 Mt. Rainier Day Tour from Seattle
- 3 Best of Mount Rainier National Park from Seattle: All-Inclusive Small-Group Tour
Start here
If you only book one thing, book this.
The one experience more first-time visitors put on the calendar than any other in the city.
The classics
Seattle's Most Popular Tours
Pike Place, the Underground, the harbor and Mount Rainier. The handful of days nearly every visitor ends up booking.
Where to begin
The experiences a Seattle trip is built around.
The market, the Sound, the mountain, the coffee, the rainforest and the falls. The days most trips are planned around, and the best way to do each one.
The big day trips
The mountains start at the city limits.
Seattle sits inside a ring of national parks and a working volcano, every one close enough to do in a day and be back for dinner. Three of the best, and how long to set aside for each.
Caffeine country
Seattle runs on coffee.
This is the city that gave the world the corner espresso bar. The first Starbucks still pulls shots across from Pike Place, but the real story is the roasters and back-alley cafes the locals actually queue for. A tasting walk is how you tell the landmark from the daily cup.
Read the guide: the best coffee tours in Seattle →Out on the Sound
The city is best seen from the water.
Seattle wraps around Elliott Bay, and the skyline only really makes sense from a deck. Harbor cruises run past the working waterfront and through the Ballard Locks, sunset sails head out toward Bainbridge, and the ferries themselves are the cheapest cruise in town.
See the harbor cruises →The setting
Salt water on one side, mountains on the other.
Seattle is pinched onto a narrow isthmus between Puget Sound and Lake Washington, with the Olympics to the west and the Cascades to the east. Green-and-white ferries cross the bay all day, container ships slide past downtown, and the whole city is built to look out at the water.
Get out on the water →Olympic National Park
Three wildernesses in one day.
An hour by ferry and road puts you on a peninsula that holds three national-park landscapes at once: the moss-draped Hoh, one of the only temperate rainforests on the continent, the driftwood-strewn Pacific beaches, and the alpine meadows of Hurricane Ridge. A guided loop links them without the route-planning.
- 1 Best of Olympic National Park from Seattle: All-Inclusive Small-Group Day Tour
- 2 Olympic National Park Small Group Day Tour w/Scenic Ferry 2CanGo
- 3 Olympic National Park Day Tour from Seattle
Jet City
The town that built the jet age.
Boeing started here in a boatworks on the Duwamish in 1916, and Seattle has been an aviation town ever since. The Museum of Flight fills the original red barn and a pair of vast hangars with everything from a Wright replica to a retired Air Force One, and the Boeing assembly tour up at Everett walks you through the largest building on earth by volume.
See all 7 flight & museum tours →By place
Start downtown, then spread out.
Pike Place and the waterfront for the first day. Seattle Center for the Space Needle. Then the day-trip ring: Mount Rainier for the volcano, the Olympic peninsula for the rainforest, Snoqualmie for the falls, and Victoria across the water.
By activity
Pick how to spend the day.
A cruise if you want the city from the water. A food tour if you came hungry. Coffee if you want to do it like a local. Walking, biking, whale watching, or a ghost story after dark.
Plan it
Three perfect days.
First time in town? Here is a long weekend that covers the city, the water and the mountains without a wasted hour.
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