Recently, we spent a few days in Seattle before and after our cruise to Alaska so I'll be breaking up our "holiday" into a few parts. I had a few questions for my friends who had already gone to Seattle so I thought I'd create this post to give you an idea of how much you can do in a day in Seattle. I'm still working on the Alaska video so I think I will do all the Seattle posts first and then I'll do the Alaska post.
FINDING A HOTEL:
For most people coming to Seattle, you'll either decide to stay near the airport (in which they have complimentary shuttles to take you to the hotel) and rent a car or stay in Downtown (near Pike Place Market). For those who decide to stay in Downtown, the prices will be about double (if not triple) the costs of the hotels near the airport. If you are not going on a holiday weekend, I would highly recommend placing a bid on Priceline. Look on different forums to find out what people are bidding and you can usually find some pretty affordable deals.
We ended up staying at Hotel FIVE before we hopped on our cruise (1 night) and Hotel Max after we came back (4 nights). The prices ranged between $150-$180 per night. As you can see from the picture, Hotel 5 is right next to the monorail but the monorail has only 1 stop at the Seattle Center (which is where the EMP museum and Space Needle are). Both places had great customer service but Hotel FIVE is definitely more recently renovated and more modern than Hotel Max. Hotel FIVE's bathrooms are to die for although watch out for that crapper because man oh man, it scared the bejeezus out of me the first time I flushed. Ladies and gents, it was hecka LOUD. Hotel Max is a bit on the older side in terms of the bathroom appliances (? is that what they're called? lol) and such so if that kind of stuff gives you the heebeegeebees, then I wouldn't recommend it. Tony was saying our room at Hotel FIVE did feel a bit like a dorm room though. Both places offer Wifi but it is not complimentary. Tony booked the hotels thru his work so we got complimentary Wifi but otherwise, I think you have to pay. For Hotel Max, I think you can get free Wifi if you like their Facebook page.
SEATTLE DAY 1:
Arrived at SeaTac airport at 3pm. We stayed at Hotel FIVE in Downtown for our first night in Seattle. I checked out a few places for transportation from SeaTac to Downtown: Lyft, Uber, private shuttles, public transportation. Because we had a checked bag which was quite large, we originally wanted to do Lyft (for some reason Uber wouldn't give me a quote online). Unfortunately, when we got to baggage claim, I began searching for available drivers in the area. There weren't any. Then finally 1 popped up and I thought "Fantastic!" but when I clicked on "Request a Lyft" the person did not respond. I estimated that a Lyft would have cost $25. Another option was the Light Rail which is the one we ended up going with. At $2.75 per person, you really can't beat it. The only problem is that our hotel was about 4-5 blocks from the Westlake stop. It wasn't that much of a walk in actuality. I would highly recommend the Light Rail to anyone traveling to Downtown from SeaTac. It's very similar to taking the BART out of SFO. It takes a little less than an hour (estimated 55 minutes) to get to Downtown.
Once we checked into our hotel, we wanted to catch some of the happy hours that were around. If there's one thing people in Seattle are great at doing, it's drinking. Doing it and doing it and doing it well. After speaking with the hotel staff, who were more than happy to point us in the right direction, we decided on The 5 Point Cafe. GREAT happy hour menu and by great I mean dirt cheap. We got a burger and fries, their Chicken Fried Bacon, and 2 beers all for $20 including tip. When I got the bill I thought, "There's actually a place with food cheaper than SGV?!" This place was also on Anthony Bourdain's Layover if there's any food show addicts out there. I will admit that if I wasn't traveling with Tony, I'd be a little intimidated by going to this place. There's an outdoor seating area and it looks like a motorcycle gang stopped by for a few drinks.
After our "appetizers" we decided to travel west to Pike Place Market. There we found Rachel's Ginger Beer which our friends had been raving about on their recent trip to Seattle. Seattle was having a heat wave (it was 6pm and 79 decgrees) so having the Pink Guava Ginger Beer was super refreshing.
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| enjoying the nice view of the waters while enjoying some ginger beer |
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| original starbucks - let the lines begin! |
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| me at the original starbucks |
A lot of the places in Pike Place Market were closing up shop so we quickly walked around just so we knew where everything was and stumbled upon the gum wall! We left our mark :).
After doing some more walking around, we were deciding on a place to eat and The Pink Door came up as one of the highest rated places in Downtown Seattle. We decided to give it a try and thank goodness we did because the food was absolutely amazing! We actually went back on our last night in Seattle and got exactly the same thing again and it was just as amazing. I would highly recommend it if you like Italian food. They had live music playing on Thursday night and it was super romantic. They also have an outdoor seating area which was where we sat the second time. I got the papperdelle and Tony got the lasagna. The papperdelle was absolutely delicious. The pasta tasted homemade and was extremely thin, to the point where if it was any thinner, it would break. The flavor was also amazing. I love spicy food and often times I end up adding red pepper flakes to everything to make it more flavorful but I didn't even think to add anything to this. The pesto lasagna was also delicious but I would say the papperdelle was even tastier!
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| papperdelle - melt in your mouth delicious! |
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| pesto lasagna |
One of the things that Anthony Bourdain mentions on The Layover is that because all these places are near or in Pike Place Market, you wouldn't expect them to be any good. In any other city they would just be tourist traps but these places are actually amazing and they really don't need to be. Super kudos to these places for making my stomach an extremely happy camper.
After dinner, we were pretty tired so we walked back to our hotel.
SEATTLE DAY 1.5:
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| the view from inside the restaurant |
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| cinnamon booze crunch and seatown mary |
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| fried egg sandwich with dungeness crab |
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| jasmine rice congee |
After breakfast, we headed back to the hotel to pack up and check out of our hotel. We then got a town car to take us to the cruise terminal which was $18 (not including tip). And we were off on our cruise!
Stay tuned for the rest of the Seattle posts!
Thanks for reading!
