I’m doing something a little different on the blog this week and taking a break from sharing photos from sessions and instead sharing some photos and recommendations from our recent trip to Seattle! Seth and I were so excited about this trip. This semester was a tough one, and knowing that we were leaving for Seattle the day after finals kept us going through the late night studying! I asked so many friends what we should do on this trip and even though we were only there for 4 days we did a ton! I wanted to combine some of the recommendations from friends and some of our own recommendations in this blog post for anyone else planning a trip to Seattle soon.

Activities

There are so many options to choose from in Seattle that it’s hard to narrow it down to the best things to do! Seth and I love to be outdoors so these activities are all centered around that. We visited parks, went on hikes, biked through the forest (on accident, oops), and spent time on the beach!

One day we spent walking through the Japanese botanical gardens north of Seattle. These gardens are full of bright colored flowers, greenery, and lakes! We took the opportunity to take some photos with the beautiful scenery!

We stayed at an airbnb in the south area of Seattle near a park with lots of trails, so one morning we decided to do some hiking/biking! We went to Seward Park and had so much fun exploring the trails there. It was so green and gorgeous! And if you’re wondering… yes I did hike in a dress! We hadn’t completely decided what we were doing for the day but it ended up working out fine.

Finally, we spent some time on Alki beach and walked down to a deck area where you can see the whole Seattle skyline! The beach was beautiful and has a nice path next to it to walk on. We snapped a few photos of the skyline while we were there!

Food/Coffee

Possibly the best thing about Seattle – food. I have to admit, some of these restaurants we visited twice because they were so good! On our first day we went to Pike Place market. This market is a place were you can go to get just about anything, but it specializes in beautiful flowers and… food! There’s an AMAZING chowder restaurant right next to the market. It’s called Pike Place Chowder and its the best. We got a chowder bread bowl and a fresh crab roll and I must say it was our favorite food in Seattle!

We also discovered that Seattle has a lot of excellent Italian restaurants! Two that we ate at and loved were Pizzeria Credo and Tutta Bella. We loved the gnocchi at Pizzeria Credo and the burrata with peperonata (appetizer) at Tutta Bella! We highly recommend checking these out if you’re looking for classier places to have dinner in Seattle.

Another thing Seattle is known for is its coffee! The original Starbucks is located near Pike Place market and it was fun to grab a coffee there. What we found more impressive was the Starbucks reserve. We spent a few hours there talking to the master roasters about the roasting process and trying out fancy drinks that can only be purchased at that location! It was fun for me as a chemical engineer to talk to the roasters about their process because a majority of my college education was process engineering based. Another coffee shop we loved was Cafe Vita! It was right next to our airbnb and we went there every day for breakfast.

Transportation/Airbnb

It was so convenient to travel around Seattle. Since rental cars are so expensive we decided to just use public transportation. Seattle has a few bike share programs and since Ofo was having a 1 week free deal going on (and we were only there for a week) we decided to use that one. We also used the light rail and Uber when we needed to! Altogether we spend under $200 on transportation which is about half what a rental car would have cost us! We always stay at Airbnbs and for this trip we decided to stay a bit further from the city to get a better deal. Our hosts were so nice and we even got to have dinner with them one night! We felt so welcomed and its one of many reasons why we love airbnb.

So that’s it! My best travel tips for Seattle. If you have more questions feel free to send me an email at reillylynnphotography@gmail.com and I’d be happy to answer them. If you want to know my tips for traveling on a budget check out this post!

 

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