Seattle

Open since 1907, the market is one of the oldest continuously running public markets in the country, a warren of fishmongers, farm stalls, bakeries, craft tables and tiny restaurants spread over several levels above the bay. Watch the fishmongers throw salmon at Pike Place Fish Market, find the neon Public Market Center clock and sign, and look into the alley for the Gum Wall. The Starbucks on Pike Place is the company's oldest surviving shop and draws long queues.

TipArrive before 10am on a weekday to see the stalls setting up without the shoulder-to-shoulder crowds of summer afternoons.

From the market, the Overlook Walk, a broad landscaped bridge opened in 2024, carries you straight down to the waterfront and over the roof of the aquarium. The original building on Pier 59 focuses on the creatures of Puget Sound, including sea otters, harbour seals and a giant Pacific octopus. Across the street, the Ocean Pavilion, opened in August 2024, holds a huge Indo-Pacific reef tank with sharks and rays.

For decades a double-decker highway, the Alaskan Way Viaduct, cut the city off from its shoreline. After it was demolished, the city built about 20 acres of new public space in its place, and the finished park was celebrated with a grand opening in September 2025. A wide promenade runs along the seawall, with glass bricks that let light through to the water below, while Pier 58 has a giant jellyfish climbing frame and Pier 62 hosts concerts and events. The Seattle Great Wheel turns at Pier 57.

TipThe park is open daily from 7am to 10pm. Sunset over the Olympics, seen from Pier 62, is the best free show in town.

Seattle's oldest neighbourhood was rebuilt in brick and stone after the Great Fire of 1889, and the streets were later raised a storey to stop flooding, leaving the old shopfronts buried. The 75-minute Underground Tour, starting at 614 First Avenue, leads you through those sunken passages with plenty of humour. Afterwards, visit the free Klondike Gold Rush National Historical Park museum, which tells how Seattle outfitted the stampede to the Yukon in 1897, and ride up the 1914 Smith Tower for the view.

TipUnderground Tour tickets can be booked ahead online. Pioneer Square is quiet at night and has a visible homelessness problem; it is fine by day, but stay aware of your surroundings.

A few blocks east, Chinese, Japanese, Filipino and Vietnamese communities built one of the most diverse old neighbourhoods on the West Coast. The Wing Luke Museum tells the story of Asian Pacific American life through restored hotel rooms and shops. Uwajimaya, a large Asian grocery and food hall, and the district's dim sum halls and noodle shops make it one of the best places to eat cheaply.

Capitol Hill is the city's liveliest neighbourhood, long the centre of LGBTQ+ Seattle, with rainbow crosswalks, record shops, cocktail bars and coffee roasters along Broadway and Pike and Pine streets. At the north end, Volunteer Park has a Victorian-style glass conservatory, a water tower you can climb for free and the Seattle Asian Art Museum.

Built for the 1962 World's Fair, the 605-foot (184 m) tower is the city's emblem. Its observation deck has floor-to-ceiling glass and a slowly rotating glass floor, the Loupe, which lets you look straight down at Seattle Center. Ride the 1962 monorail from Westlake Center downtown to get there in two minutes.

TipTimed tickets are sold online; a clear evening, or a morning when the mountains are out, is worth the wait for.

Next to the Needle, this museum is devoted to the work of Tacoma-born glass artist Dale Chihuly. Galleries of glowing sculptures lead to a tall glasshouse hung with a vast flower-like piece and out into a garden where glass forms grow among the plants.

Frank Gehry's crumpled, multicoloured building houses exhibitions on music, film, science fiction and games. Seattle's music history is the heart of it, with galleries on Jimi Hendrix, who grew up here, and Nirvana and the grunge scene of the early 1990s.

This small park on the steep south slope of Queen Anne Hill has the classic postcard view: the Space Needle in front of the downtown towers, Elliott Bay to the right and, on clear days, Mount Rainier behind. It is a 20-minute uphill walk from Seattle Center.

Fremont calls itself the centre of the universe, and its quirky public art backs that up. The best known is a huge concrete troll crouching under the Aurora Bridge, clutching a real Volkswagen Beetle, which locals sculpted in 1990. The neighbourhood has good brewpubs and a Sunday market, and the Burke-Gilman Trail runs along the canal towards Gas Works Park.

The Hiram M. Chittenden Locks, opened in 1917, lift boats between the salt water of Puget Sound and the freshwater lakes inside the city. It is oddly mesmerising to watch fishing boats and kayaks rise and fall. Beside the locks, a fish ladder has an underwater viewing room where migrating salmon push upstream in summer and early autumn, with sockeye, then chinook and coho, the best chances from about July to September. The surrounding botanical garden is free.

TipFish numbers vary from year to year; in late spring and winter the ladder may be almost empty.

Seattle's largest park occupies a former army post, Fort Lawton, on a headland jutting into the Sound. Trails wind through forest and meadows to sandy bluffs with views of the Olympics, and a path drops down to the beach and the 1881 West Point Lighthouse. It feels a long way from the city.

The 35-minute ferry from Colman Dock on the waterfront is the cheapest scenic cruise in the region, with the skyline shrinking behind you and the mountains ahead. Walk off the boat into Winslow, the island's small town, for cafés, wineries and the Bainbridge Island Historical Museum. The moving Japanese American Exclusion Memorial marks the place where, in 1942, island families became the first Japanese Americans forced from their homes into wartime camps.

At Boeing Field, south of downtown, this is one of the world's largest air and space museums. It includes Boeing's original Red Barn factory, a Concorde, an early presidential Air Force One and a full-size space shuttle trainer. It makes a good rainy-day visit.

About 30 miles (50 km) east of the city, the Snoqualmie River plunges 268 feet (82 m) into a misty gorge. An observation deck sits right by the car park, and a steep trail leads down to the river. The falls are sacred to the Snoqualmie Tribe, and fans of the TV series Twin Peaks will recognise the lodge perched above them.

Rising to 14,410 feet (4,392 m), Rainier is an active volcano wrapped in glaciers. The classic day trip, about two and a half hours' drive each way, goes to Paradise on the south side, where trails cross wildflower meadows in late July and August and the Henry M. Jackson Visitor Center opens year-round with limited winter hours. Unlike in 2024 and 2025, no timed-entry reservation is needed in 2026, but entrance queues can exceed an hour on summer weekends.

TipFrom 1 November to 1 May every vehicle in the park must carry tire chains, including four-wheel-drive and rental cars. In winter only the Nisqually entrance road to Paradise is open, and the gate times depend on snow, so check the park's alerts page before setting out.

Across Puget Sound, Olympic National Park protects glacier-topped mountains, temperate rainforest and wild Pacific beaches. It is too big for one day, but Hurricane Ridge, about a 2.5-hour trip via the Bainbridge ferry and Port Angeles, gives sweeping mountain views from a paved road. Its day lodge was destroyed by fire in 2023, so facilities are limited to temporary trailers, and winter access is restricted. To see the mossy Hoh Rain Forest or the coast, plan to stay a night or two.