Seattle is a great place to visit during the summer with cooler temperatures than Texas. Seattle is known for its many coffee shops, including Starbucks, Seattle's Best, and other local joints. There is a coffee shop on almost every corner in downtown Seattle. Seattle residents really do need their caffeine.
I stayed in downtown Seattle at the Sheraton hotel, located 2 blocks from a light rail station and about 10 minute walk to Pike Place Market and the harbor.
For my Seattle visit, I focused on the main tourist sites, including:
1) Waterfront, where I went on a cruise around the Seattle harbor. This 1-hour tour provides views of the Seattle skyline, Mt. Rainier, the Space Needle, Olympic Mountains, Starbuck's headquarters, and Seattle's many ports.
More Seattle harbor pictures.
2) Pike Place Market, consisting of many gift shops, food stands, restaurants, and cafes including the first ever Starbucks. There is also the Pike Place Fish Market where workers throw fish around. Many visitors stop by just to see the fish throwing.
3) Flying into Seattle on a Boeing airplane, it was fitting for me to visit their Future of Flight center in Everett, which consists of an aviation museum with information about Boeing's planes, and a tour of Boeing's factory. Interestingly, the museum also includes information about some Airbus planes as well. Boeing's factory, where they build their 747, 767, 777, and 787 airplanes is the world's largest building by volume. The factory is like an indoor city with a fire department, security, clinic, power station, water treatment plant, and numerous restaurants. Factory workers use bikes and golf carts to get around. The factory even created its own weather. Heat from the ground would rise and combine with the cooler air near the top, creating clouds and even drizzle. The weather cleared when air-circulation systems were installed. For the factory tour, we saw the 747, 777, and 787 manufacturing lines and learned about the process in building those planes, including assembly of parts, painting, and test flying (there is a small airport for this). Photography of the factory is not allowed, so I have no factory pictures.
4) Space Needle observation deck. I went up there just before sunset, and enjoyed daytime and nighttime views of Seattle from above. The Space Needle was built in 1962 to give Seattle a stand-out structure for the Seattle World's Fair. The Space Needle was build to withstand winds up to 200 mph, and earthquakes up to 9.0 in magnitude. So during a powerful storm or a major earthquake, the Space Needle is probably the safest building to be in.
