Recently, we visited Washington for a long weekend.

We dedicated an entire day to Seattle, primarily the Pike Place Market area. This trip was about leisure, exploration, and good food, and we were able to get all of that from this area.

Pike Place Market

Coffee & Breakfast

To start your day, wake up and get in line for the first Starbucks or for one of the many delicious pastry shops as there are too many to choose from. We got to the market around 8:30AM and got in the already very long line for La Panier. We waited for about 45 minutes , which sounds like a long wait but it went by quickly as we watched all of the market start to bustle. We got a sampling of assorted French pastries, excellent lattes, and a couple of boxes of macarons to take home.

We wandered over to a bench overlooking Elliot Bay, which connects to Puget Sound. Here we enjoyed our breakfast and watching the growing crowds of people on the outer edge of the Public Market Center.

The entire Market is constantly busy and yields an amazing people-watching venue, and by 10:00 AM on a Saturday, it is definitely crowded. Even though the area is busy, there is so much to enjoy and experience and most of the time, you won’t wait very long to do something. We definitely recommend taking your time to weave around the shop vendors and enjoy the scent and spectacular colors of fresh cut flowers.

Lunch, Cocktail Hour, Fun in the Market, & Dinner

Beecher’s Cheese is a fun way to enjoy amazing cheese and to watch it being made. We had the macaroni and cheese and it was excellent.

For cocktail hour, we definitely recommend Rachel’s Ginger Beer. They have a ton of amazing cocktails and an excellent seating area.

Fun in the Market

The Gum Wall

Before the lunch crowd arrives, wander to the other side of the Market and feast your eyes on the Gum Wall. Here, you can enjoy a different set of scents and colors as the sticky, sweet smell of thousands of pieces of chewed up gum cover every centimeter of the walls of a tucked away alley. If you are planning ahead, be sure to bring gum for each person, an instant camera, and a sharpie to leave your mark.

Bronze Pig Statues

**As you’re wandering around the Market area, notice the bronze pig hoof tracks on the ground. Be sure to take a photo with the famous** **Rachel the Piggy Bank** **and any other bronze pigs you see around!**

**While you’re there, take time to admire the showmanship of the fishmongers, admire eclectic and handmade wares, and buy some fresh produce.**

Dinner

If you like sourdough, you will LOVE Von's 1000 Spirits. It is definitely an excellent, huge bar and the cocktails are to die for, but the food blew our minds! We had the Burrata Spread with Sourdough Baguette, Spiced Fig, Prosciutto and Arugula Pizza, and the Tellicherry Chicken and Smoked Gouda Pasta. We couldn’t finish it all but enjoyed every amazing bite.

The Seattle Great Wheel

The Seattle Great Wheel is definitely a tourist attraction that’s worth it and even more so at sunset! We recommend both the Needle and the Wheel at sunset, so you’ll have to choose if you’ve only got one day, but we chose the Wheel and it was a lot of fun and the views of Elliot Bay were spectacular.

The Wheel lights up in the evenings on the weekends, but we enjoyed watching the sunset and enjoying the calm, serene view.

Seattle Space Needle

No trip to Seattle is complete without a visit to the Space Needle. It opens at 11:00 every day, so we scheduled this then, but in hindsight, we probably would have scheduled this for the sunset. You can purchase a City Pass, which gives you access to 5 different Seattle attractions including the Space Needle and the Aquarium and then your choice of 3 of the following: the Museum of Pop Culture, a Harbor Tour, the Chihuly Glass Garden, and the Woodland Park Zoo. If we were traveling with children, we might have opted for this option.

If you aren’t interested in all of those attractions, you can buy tickets (which are time-sensitive at the time of our visit) to just the Space Needle or to the Space Needle + the Chihuly Glass Gardens. You really can’t go wrong with any of these selections and if you have never seen Chihuly’s work are interested in intricately designed blown-glass art, definitely add this to your visit.

Our Space Needle experience included COVID precautions (mandatory masks and social distancing), but nothing was detracted from the experience and the precautions were done in a way that made us feel safe and was not cumbersome.

We highly recommend that you lean against the glass, face-forward, and spread out your arms when you’re outside and to watch the world below slowly spin by through the glass floor for a larger than life experience and an amazing photo-op. No matter what you do, the views are spectacular and this is truly a must-do when visiting Seattle!