Seattle Travel and Lifestyle Panorama Guide: From Job Opportunities to Arts and Culture Experiences

Seattle is a city that is really poised, I think, on the future and offers so much in the way of industry and opportunity for jobs, for career growth, for research, science, and so many other industries. And yet it also has a really mythic lifestyle, I think, that appeals to a lot of people. And the combination of both, that you can find a job here and find job growth here, but you also can really enjoy this mythic lifestyle that Seattle has popularized. Not just across the country, but across the world. I think that people are very intrigued with the mountains, the national parks, the water, and all of that surrounding a very urban, sophisticated, cultured city. I think that they first hear about Starbucks and Microsoft and Boeing. And so they know the industry, they know that there's something amazing here, there's something in the water in the earth and the trees that really inspires creativity. It's an incubator for creative thought and for industry.

They know popular culture, they know consumer phenomena like Starbucks, and they want to come and see where those things were created. Right on the heels of that, I think, too, would be major movies like sleepless in Seattle. 25 years after it came out, we're still getting questions from travelers from Japan and China and the UK and other places. If you think about a film like sleepless in Seattle, it was all about lifestyle. It was about living on a houseboat and getting to work by boats and the by-place market and romantic restaurants. And here in my business and tourism promotion, that's exactly the kind of message we want to get out there. Every big city has negative aspects. Traffic is a growing challenge and problem. Although for many visitors, they don't find it to be that big a problem unless they're trying to get to and from the airport at rush hour. Real estate prices, very, very high. Some of the fastest rising in the country. So from a visitor standpoint, I think that those things are surmountable. From a residency standpoint, those can be challenging.

We have to go to the by-place market. The oldest continuously operated farmers market in the country. And more important than that distinction, I think, that locals will tell you it is the heart and the soul of the city. And I definitely agree with that. It's an amazing place where you can meet the producer. You can see a bit of Seattle's indigenous foods and seafood and also really meet the people who are behind it, the people who grow it and fish and harvest and sell it. And the whole concept of the market was to take out the middleman and they did, and more than a hundred years after it started, it still exists right in the heart of the city. You can't miss the space needle. It still is the best view in the city, I think. And among observation towers around the world, I think it's one of the most attractive and iconic still.

In your square where the city began, the historic district is a must. It's so well preserved. It's 20 square blocks of Victorian Romanesque architecture. Wonderful history opportunities there that are very palatable for the visitor, like the Seattle Underground tour, for example. The Seattle Waterfront, in general, is a working waterfront. So you're going to see passenger ferries and tugboats and freighters and all kinds of waterfront activity that you can't always see in a lot of other major cities. Sometimes the waterfront and the working part of it is removed from the visitor part of the city. But here it's right there. It's right at the doorstep of Seattle. And let's see. One more, I think the Seattle Center in general, which is a 72 or rather 74 acre campus right in the heart of the city and was the birthplace of the world's fair in 1962. Still well preserved and so many attractions all in one great place.

Typical Seattleite. Well, I immediately wonder if maybe I am one. I am a Seattleite and have been for a long time. How typical am I? Love the outdoors. Own lots of Gore-Tex. Love food. And I love going to Seattle's amazing restaurants. When there's a new one opens, I can't wait to test it out. I love culture, arts and culture. I like going to plays and I love the breadth of culture that Seattle offers and trying new things. I always go to Bumper Shoot, which is our Arts Festival every Labor Day weekend. I wouldn't miss that. So in those ways, I think I would be pretty typical. How am I not typical? I don't ride my bike to work. A lot of Seattleites do. I think too. It's an interesting question because I think that if you ask most Seattleites, what is typical? They would probably stumble over that question as well. I think there's something innate in any Seattleite that doesn't want to define, that wants to sort of leave things amorphous and open.

I love summer in Seattle. There is no better place in the world to be in the summertime. The weather is beautiful from May through, at least the end of September, despite popular misconception. It really doesn't rain that much. It's just beautiful throughout that whole four or five month period. The air is wonderful. You have that maritime climate. You have the ocean air, which comes in. So even when it's warm in the summertime, 30 Celsius is a daytime high. It's still going to cool down quite a bit in the evening time and you have a nice ocean breeze. I love the proximity to great restaurants. Amazing bike paths, urban kayaking, right within the heart of the city. I love that Seattle is a very dense urban city with a great vibe, but it's surrounded by three national parks within a two hour drive. And in the warm weather months, I could easily do a day hike. I like to ski. I like downhill skiing. And in Seattle, we don't have a lot of ski resorts per se, but we tend to think of Seattle as your resort hotel. And you could easily go night skiing and come back to Seattle to sleep or go up just for a quick day ski and then come back again. Water. Seattle is surrounded by it. Surrounded by saltwater on the west and completely by fresh water in the east. And then there's lakes and channels in between. You can't be in Seattle and not have a sense of the water.

And a lot of people who don't live in Seattle don't completely know that we have more repertory theaters per capita than any city outside of New York or that opera and ballet are thriving here like in few other cities. We have a public art program in many of our public buildings. You'll see art on manhole covers, on sidewalks, walking down the street in downtown Seattle. Our airport has a very robust popular music program where you can hear bands over the intercom, but you can also see live bands playing in the airport terminals. So we're surrounded by art. We're immersed in art. Many of us are artists in our spare time. Seattle has it all.