A Tourist in Seattle

“To some extent, Seattle remains a frontier metropolis, a place where people can experiment with their lives, and change and grow and make things happen.” ~ Tom Robbins

Dear tourist, we were talking about your trip here during our meeting today, and we have some ideas of things that we’d like to do while you’re here. But we also want some input from you about things you’d be interested in.

Things we thought might be fun to do:

One day (probably Monday), Jim will plan a group lunch. We’re thinking it would be fun to walk to Pike Place Market. It’s one of the oldest farmer’s markets in the U.S. There are *many* restaurants and cafes at the market, and it’s also interesting just to look at the different fruit/vegetable/meat/fish vendors to see what they’re selling. It’s about a 15-minute walk from the office. As long as it isn’t raining hard, we could walk there, wander around a little, eat lunch, and then walk back afterwards.

Jim hopes to take you to Tula’s Jazz Club, perhaps on the Monday evening, to hear some live music and have a meal. As it turns out, his jazz band is scheduled to play that evening, so you could hear someone you know.

Jim is thinking about options for Friday afternoon: some kind of team activity, but we’ll have to see how that works out. You might want to go off and do something by yourself, so feel free to tell us you’d like to reserve that last day for non-group activities.

But if you’d like to do a team activity, there are lots of options for interesting, relaxing things we could do as a team that would also allow you to see more of the Seattle area. For example, we could take the ferry across Puget Sound to Bainbridge Island. There are lots of little shops & restaurants near the ferry terminal. And then take the ferry back to Seattle. It’s a *beautiful* ferry ride, and you really get gorgeous views of the city from out on the water.

If you like Chinese food, it would be fun to go one of the days to the International District for a dim sum lunch.

Depending on your interests, there are things to see:

• If you’re interested in aviation, there’s a great tour at the Boeing factory in Everett where they build the 747, 767, 777, and 787 (http://www.boeing.com/commercial/tours/index.html). There’s also a very good aviation museum in Seattle: http://www.museumofflight.org/.
• If you’re interested in art, the Seattle Art Museum (http://www.seattleartmuseum.org/) and Seattle Asian Art Museum (http://www.seattleartmuseum.org/visit/visitSAAM.asp) are great. There’s also a brand new Chihuly glass museum at Seattle Center (http://www.chihulygardenandglass.com/).
• If you’re interested in food, there are countless fantastic restaurants in Seattle, and you’ll find that we’d love to go to them with you (we all seem to like to eat! J)
• If you’re interested in music or science-fiction, there’s the EMP (Experience Music Project): http://www.empmuseum.org/. The current main exhibit is about Jimi Hendrix.

Here’s a general link to lots of Seattle info: https://www.seattle.gov/visiting/

And a link to the Seattle Center which is where the Space Needle is, plus museums, etc.

And a link to a list of top 10 things to do in Seattle.

Let us know any thoughts you have about things you’d like to do, and we’ll get some things set up.

Picture credit for the market picture above goes to Rochelle on Flickr.