I’m a volunteer for some orgs that occasionally host people visiting Seattle. If I’m showing a group of people around Seattle, and I want to optimize the experience for them (so, popular cool spots even if they are cliches, and usually no side trips to places I’ve never been before), I follow the same routine a lot of the time, so you can feel free to borrow this (does require a car):
- Start: Assume they have been exploring on their own around the Space Needle, and pick them up there.
- Check out the Up Garden, the community garden on the roof of the parking garage between 3rd and 4th and between Mercer and Roy. A scenic spot that also has an old Detroit muscle car with the roof sawed off, filled with soil and with plants growing out of it.
- Drive to Kerry Park. Do it this way: Going uphill on Queen Anne Ave, rather than taking a left on Highland (the most direct route to the park), take a left on Prospect, then take a right on 5th and a right on Highland, because (1) it’s much easier to find parking west of Kerry Park than east of it, and (2) this preserves the surprise, so people don’t see the view from Kerry Park until they get out of the car and walk up to it. Also, remember this hack for Kerry Park pictures (to make the background bigger, back away and zoom in) https://www.reddit.com/r/Seattle/comments/1lz9qyv/reminder_for_kerry_park_pictures/
- While you’re on Highland you can also walk west to the view from the Betty Bowen Viewpoint.
- Back into the car. Stop for a picture in front of the Coleman house, just south of Crockett St and Nob Hill Ave: https://www.reddit.com/r/theemeraldcity/comments/1sexpky/this_coleman_house_on_nob_hill_ave_in_queen_anne/
- Go north on 99 and park in Fremont to see the Fremont Troll, the Lenin statue, the Fremont Rocket, and whatever else you want to see in Fremont. Reasonably priced and easily shareable food option: Tsar dumpling (and with a neat Lenin tie-in 🙂 ). You can also go out on the Aurora 99 bridge on the pedestrian walkways on either side, with a view of Gas Works / Lake Union / Mount Rainier on the east side or the canal / Olympic mountains on the west side.
- Over to Gas Works. Reminder that some people have seen it and don’t realize it: It’s the place in 10 Things I Hate About You where Heath Ledger and Julia Stiles shoot paintballs at each other. (The Fremont Troll is also briefly visible in 10 Things.) And then if people want to keep exploring:
- Head to Ballard and stop at the Edith Macefield house: https://www.reddit.com/r/todayilearned/comments/1ezqunn/til_that_in_2006_a_woman_named_edith_macefield/
- Ballard Locks.
submitted by /u/bennetthaselton
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