Attractions in Seattle

If there is one destination that encapsulates Seattle, it's Pike Place Market. This attraction, a city landmark for more than a century, started out as a place for farmers to sell their products and was a key source of cheap food during the Great Depression. The bedrock enterprises--a year-round farmers market and crafts arcade--remain, but you'll also find ethnic groceries, restaurants, bakeries, meat and seafood stalls, bookstores, specialty shops and small businesses. It's a head-spinning assemblage in every sense. How do you "do" Pike Place? It's simple; just dive right in, browsing, nibbling and purchasing as you go. One bit of planning advice: The Market Garage at 1531 Western Ave., just down the hill from Victor Steinbrueck Park, is a convenient place to park.

Nearby is the Pioneer Square Historic District. Exploring the 30-odd blocks of this multifaceted urban neighborhood--Seattle's first downtown--it's hard to believe the area was nothing but an immense tidal mudflat in the early 1850s. The harmonious brick architecture dates from the aftermath of a disastrous 1889 fire that destroyed most of the original wooden buildings. People come here to wander the gaggle of galleries and trendy retail outlets, duck into bookstores, celebrate sunny weather at a sidewalk cafe or make a varied nightlife scene.

For some historical perspective, visit Klondike Gold Rush National Historical Park. This museum chronicles the feverish 1897 gold rush in the Canadian Yukon and Seattle's lucrative role in outfitting prospective treasure seekers with everything from steamship tickets to pack animals. For a glorious view (on clear days) of the city, the Olympic and Cascade ranges and Mount Rainier, head to the observation level on the 35th floor of the Smith Tower. This was the tallest building west of the Mississippi when it opened in 1914, and the city's loftiest until 1969.

Bordering Pioneer Square on the east is the International District, also known as Chinatown. The neighborhood developed in the late 19th century, a time when Chinese immigrants came to Seattle to find work in lumber mills, on fishing boats and with railroad construction crews. Over the ensuing decades it has become both a home and a community center for Chinese, Japanese, Filipino, Korean, Vietnamese, Cambodian and Laotian Asian Americans. Since it would take weeks to experience all of the International District's restaurants and specialty shops, a good one-stop immersion experience is Uwajimaya, a huge retail store with grocery, seafood, meat, produce, deli and gift departments offering a myriad array of the exotic, the unusual and the delicious.

Museums? Seattle has a passel of them. The Museum of Flight has an aircraft collection that includes early primitive examples like the Lilienthal 1893 Glider--a contraption with curving, bat-like wings that predated the Wright Brothers' first efforts--as well as more recent technological accomplishments (check out the sleek Concorde supersonic airliner).

The Seattle Art Museum and the Seattle Asian Art Museum, two sister museums, also are great attractions. Downtown's SAM will reopen in early May following completion of an expansion project, with the popular "Hammering Man"--a towering black mechanical sculpture complete with movable arm--still presiding over the main entrance. In the interim, visit the Seattle Asian Art Museum in Volunteer Park, which has an outstanding collection of paintings, sculpture, calligraphy, porcelain, jades, bronzes and other Asian works of art.

Switch gears from the artistic to the fantastic at the Science Fiction Museum and Hall of Fame, on the grounds of Seattle Center. This attraction salutes all things visionary with exhibit galleries such as Brave New Worlds, which displays computer-generated vistas of cityscapes from visually innovative films like "Blade Runner" and "The Matrix." The museum's hall of fame honors the genre's greats, from authors Jules Verne and H.G. Wells to filmmaker Steven Spielberg to stop-motion animator Ray Harryhausen. And no fan will want to miss the fearsomely toothy Alien Queen, who engaged in a memorable fight to the death with Sigourney Weaver in the sci-fi classic "Aliens."

The museum shares a building with the Experience Music Project (EMP). Both lauded and derided by Seattleites, the unusual structure somewhat resembles a melting electric guitar. Inside are exhibit galleries celebrating the diversity of popular music, from blues and jazz to rock, punk, funk and hip-hop. One exhibit is devoted to Seattle-born Jimi Hendrix, whose pioneering blend of blues and psychedelia and awesome guitar mastery revolutionized pop music in the late '60s. A third Seattle Center museum, the venerable Pacific Science Center, has lots of kid-friendly interactive exhibits, although everyone will get a kick out of the moving robotic dinosaurs (they even roar) and appreciate the beauty of the winged creatures flitting about in the Tropical Butterfly House.

The Emerald City is a particularly apt nickname, and its botanical riches can be enjoyed at both Volunteer Park Washington Park Arboretum. Volunteer Park, in the Capitol Hill neighborhood, is Seattle's most elegant greensward, an expanse of formal gardens, glass-surfaced ponds, and noble cedars and spruces surrounded by fine old mansions. A riot of cactuses, orchids and tropical vegetation grows in the park's steel and cast-iron Conservatory. The arboretum spreads south from Union Bay, encompassing 200 wooded acres in which thrive thousands of species of trees, shrubs and flowers from the Pacific Northwest and around the world. It looks simultaneously manicured and wild, and there's beauty in every season. Take a slow spin along scenic Arboretum Drive, then get out of the car for a peaceful stroll through the Japanese Garden, a serene haven of evergreens, camellias and Japanese maples planted among rocks and sculptures.

Water, of course, plays an instrumental role in past and present Seattle history. The Lake Washington Ship Canal and Hiram M. Chittenden Locks is a great attraction sometimes referred to as "Seattle's ditch." They connect saltwater Puget Sound with the freshwater network formed by Salmon Bay, Lake Union, Portage Bay, Union Bay and Lake Washington. The locks opened in 1917 to a flotilla of vessels led by the Roosevelt, the flagship of Adm. Robert Edwin Peary's North Pole expedition, and are still among the nation's busiest. A fish ladder enables sockeye, chinook and coho salmon to swim on a gradual incline as they migrate to their spawning grounds in upstream creeks and rivers.

Odyssey Maritime Discovery Center, appropriately located on the downtown waterfront, has interactive exhibits wonderfully illustrating Seattle's role in marine trade, including Puget Sound's role as the gateway to the Pacific Rim. Take the Argosy Cruises narrated boat tour of the waterfront and shipyards to gain a suitably salty appreciation of the city's maritime face. Argosy also offers a popular 2.5-hour Locks Cruise that tours the harbor and includes passage through the Lake Washington Ship Canal and Chittenden Locks.

For a slightly different perspective of the water, drive across the Evergreen Point Floating Bridge--the world's longest, with 33 separate pontoon units--and the Lake Washington Floating Bridge, about 1,000 feet shorter. Both bridges are prone to traffic congestion, and Evergreen Point's days may eventually be numbered due to persistent mechanical problems, but both offer views of the lake, shoreline neighborhoods and the Cascades, from Mount Rainier in the south to Mount Baker in the north.

Perhaps the most conventionally touristy thing to do in Seattle is trek to the Space Needle. The attraction's futuristic space-age look was conceived as a symbolic icon for the 1962 World's Fair. The kind of place longtime residents pay little attention to but first-time visitors should not miss, it offers a breathtaking 360-degree panorama from the observation deck at the 520-foot level; telescopes installed on the outside walkway intensify the views.

Another tourist favorite is the Woodland Park Zoo, known for its naturalistic habitats representing different bioclimatic zones. Bears, river otters and bald eagles are among the inhabitants of Northern Trail, which replicates a harsh cold-weather environment, while the elephants of Tropical Asia and the jaguars, gorillas, monkeys and lemurs of the Tropical Rain Forest are accustomed to more comfy temperatures.

Finally, embark on a scenic voyage to pint-size Blake Island in Puget Sound, Tillicum Village Northwest Coast Indian Cultural Center. Its centerpiece, a huge cedar longhouse, lies snug against a backdrop of dense green forest and recalls the ancient communal dwellings built by Northwest Coast Indians. You're sure to enjoy the stage show honoring music and dance traditions, and the salmon dinner that precedes it--the delectable fish is baked on cedar stakes over an open fire and basted with lemon butter--is cause for further celebration.