Trial & Error

🇺🇸 USA

Seattle

Mountains behind the espresso.

Water, salmon, and espresso, and the versions worth your time all sit a short ride outside the tourist funnel. Summer is when everything below runs at full strength, and yes, bring the jacket anyway.

Taste

🍜 Top 5 Eats

  1. Un Bien, Ballard

    The Caribbean roast pork sandwich: slow-braised pork, caramelized onions, aioli, all of it on a Macrina baguette, and it's the single most defended sandwich in Seattle. Run by the sons of the man behind the original Paseo, and the line is regulars all the way down. Get it spicy from the Shilshole location and eat it sitting on the driftwood at Golden Gardens. Best lunch in the city, no qualifiers.

  2. Communion Restaurant & Bar, Central District

    Kristi Brown cooks what she calls Seattle soul, Southern roots sourced from the Pacific Northwest, in the historic heart of Black Seattle. She built the room so that, in her words, "the millionaire can sit with the homie," and you can see that's true the moment you walk in. The cocktails are half the point. Closed Mondays and Tuesdays, and Sunday brunch is the sleeper move.

  3. Maneki, Japantown

    Serving since 1904, the oldest Japanese restaurant in the city and Seattle's first sushi bar, still running as a neighborhood izakaya with multi-generation regulars. It survived the wartime incarceration of the community around it and 120 years of Seattle booms and busts. Ask for a tatami room, because those go first, and note that reservations are by text. It also closes early, which is extremely Seattle of it.

  4. The Walrus and the Carpenter, Ballard

    The oyster bar that put Ballard Ave on the map: Pacific Northwest oysters at a marble bar, seasonal small plates, and no reservations, ever. The local move is a weekday afternoon at the bar right as happy hour opens, which is also the cheapest way in. Otherwise put your name in early and go walk Ballard Ave until they call you.

  5. Espresso Vivace, Capitol Hill

    David Schomer is the person most credited with developing American latte art and the obsessive espresso technique behind it, and he's been at it here for 38 years. Order a cappuccino at the Brix cafe on Broadway and watch the rosetta get poured. Locals will argue it was Schomer, not Starbucks, who made coffee huge in this city, and drinking here means you've picked a side.

Do

🎟️ Top 5 Local Experiences

  1. A Ballard Sunday: farmers market, then the Locks

    The market runs every Sunday on cobblestoned Ballard Ave, year-round, rain or shine, Washington growers only, and it predates the whole farmers-market boom. Graze it, then walk fifteen minutes to the Chittenden Locks and watch boats stair-step between Puget Sound and the ship canal for free. Salmon run through in season, Chinook in August and coho in September, and this is genuinely how locals entertain visiting parents.

  2. Kayaking Lake Union from Agua Verde

    You rent the boat off the dock of a Mexican cafe on Portage Bay, paddle past houseboats while seaplanes take off over your head, then push into Lake Union for the skyline. It might be the most Seattle hour available. Tacos at the cafe after, obviously. Their hours move with the weather, so call before you drive over.

  3. Discovery Park to the West Point Lighthouse

    Five hundred acres of forest, meadow, bluff, and beach inside city limits, with a loop of about five miles that ends at an 1881 lighthouse looking across the Sound at the Olympics. Free, no permits, no ceremony. The trail turns to mud after rain, so wear real shoes and skip the white sneakers.

  4. The Bainbridge Island ferry, round trip

    Walk on at Colman Dock without a car, stand on the stern deck as the skyline pulls away, get coffee and wander Winslow, then ride back at golden hour for the approach. Locals ride this thing purely for the ride, especially on a clear day when, as they say here, "the mountain is out." Best skyline-and-Rainier view you can buy at a walk-on fare.

  5. Volunteer Park water tower and conservatory

    A 1906 brick water tower with an observation deck over the city and the Space Needle, free to climb, plus a Victorian glass conservatory next door. This is the viewpoint locals send you to when you tell them Kerry Park was mobbed. Pair it with the Capitol Hill record shops and a Vivace cappuccino and you've got an afternoon.

Frame

📸 Top 5 Places for Photos

All 5 spots on one map

  1. Kerry Park, Queen Anne · facing SE
  2. Gas Works Park, Wallingford · facing S
  3. Pike Place Market before 9am
  4. West Point Lighthouse, Discovery Park · facing W
  5. Seacrest Park, West Seattle · facing NE

Loads an interactive map from OpenFreeMap. Map data © OpenStreetMap contributors.

  1. Kerry Park, Queen Anne

    The Seattle postcard, and it earns it: Space Needle, downtown, Elliott Bay, and Mt. Rainier floating behind the whole thing on a clear day. Sunset into blue hour is the window, and in summer you need an hour's head start to get a tripod spot. If it's mobbed, walk downhill to Marshall Park or duck into Parsons Gardens across the street.

    Open in Maps Exact vantage point

    Facing SE: southeast to the Space Needle, downtown and Elliott Bay, with Rainier floating behind the whole thing on a clear day

  2. Gas Works Park, Wallingford

    Rusted gasification towers as industrial foreground with the full skyline across Lake Union behind them, sailboats and seaplanes included. Shoot south at golden hour, then climb the kite hill for the elevated angle with the sundial. Summer evenings get lively, so go on a weekday if you want the frame clean.

    Open in Maps Exact vantage point

    Facing S: south across Lake Union with the rusted towers as foreground, then up the kite hill for the elevated angle

  3. Pike Place Market before 9am

    The neon Public Market Center sign from the corner of Pike and 1st, empty cobblestones, morning light raking down the street, and vendors setting up around you. By late morning it's shoulder to shoulder and none of that is possible. Photograph the early market, come back and eat in the noon one, and skip the original Starbucks line entirely.

    Open in Maps Approximate, within a block

    the neon Public Market Center sign from the corner of Pike and 1st, with morning light raking down empty cobblestones

  4. West Point Lighthouse, Discovery Park

    An 1881 lighthouse on a driftwood-strewn point with the Olympics across the water, and at sunset the light drops behind the range and the sky does the full Pacific Northwest routine. Budget for the climb back up, which is a steep half mile in fading light. Carry a headlamp in the shoulder seasons.

    Open in Maps Exact vantage point

    Facing W: west to the Olympics across the water, with the sun dropping behind the range

  5. Seacrest Park, West Seattle

    The whole downtown skyline across Elliott Bay at water level, which is the composition you can't get from any hill. Late afternoon light hits the towers face-on and blue hour, once they light up, is the keeper. Ride the water taxi over from downtown and shoot from the stern on the way, because the boat is the better platform.

    Open in Maps Exact vantage point

    Facing NE: northeast across Elliott Bay at the skyline from water level, which is the composition no hill gives you

Been to Seattle? We probably got something wrong.

That's the point — these lists improve one error at a time.

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