Seattle Center

• The Seattle Center was built for the 1962 World's Fair as a preview of the future. The Center has evolved with the decades and still remains an icon of the present and times to come. Standing above Seattle Center is the world famous Space Needle, topped with a revolving restaurant and an observation deck. At the base of the Space Needle is a monorail that offers a quick trip to downtown for $2. Also at the base of the Space Needle is the new Experience Music Project, housed in a swirling, bulging building designed to look like a destroyed guitar. This museum also houses the Science Fiction Museum and Hall of Fame. To one side of the Space Needle is the Seattle Science Center, a museum of technology and science and a frequent destination for local field trips. To the other side of the Space Needle is the Seattle Center House, which houses a food court, live music facilities and the Seattle Children's Museum. The Seattle Center is home to many local festivals, including Bumbershoot, a music and entertainment extravaganza, and the Bite of Seattle, where local restaurants all offer meals and tasting samples of their best eats. Seattle Center is also home to the Pacific Northwest Ballet, a conference center, the Key Arena, home of the Seattle Storm basketball team, and three mainstage theatre companies, the Seattle Repertory Theatre, the Intiman Playhouse and the Seattle Children's Theatre.
  
  

Pike Place Market

• Seattle's Pike Place Market
  
  Featured as a Seattle landmark in movies and television, the Pike Place Market is certainly less vertical than the Space Needle, but no less iconic. You can take the monorail from the Seattle Center and walk just a few blocks west toward the water to find the Market at 1st and Pike. Founded more than 100 years ago, the Pike Place Market originated so that locals could "Meet the Producer" of their own food. Today the Pike Place Market is host to thousands of tourists a day, as well as fine dining and local shopping. The Market offers fresh produce, flowers, fish and meat daily, as well as specialty shops offering spices, teas, keepsakes, clothes and handmade cheeses and breads. The Market is also home to the original Starbucks Coffee, where you can see life music performers out of doors any time on the weekends. At the center of the Market is a giant brass piggy bank, just in front of the fish stands, home of Seattle's famous flying salmon. No one has more fun at their work than the fishmongers, who hurl fresh orders back and forth, catching them in newspaper and wrapping them for you to carry home. You can order fish packed in dry ice and shipped all over the world.
  
  

The Seattle Waterfront

• You can take an elevator from Pike Place down to sea level to reach the Seattle Waterfront. Starting with the Edgewater hotel at the north and stretching to the ferry dock in the south, the Seattle Waterfront is approximately a mile of dining, shopping, and touring. From T-shirt shops to fudge, the Olde Curiosity Shoppe to water tours, and Ivar's famous fish and chips to touring a decommissioned Cold War Russian Foxtrot submarine, you can spend a day discovering Seattle via the waterfront. South of the waterfront now is where the industry lies and where the cruise ships board, but Seattle's old piers, where there are now restaurants and shops, used to be the beating heart of the city's ocean-based economy. Seattle started here, but it's not a bad place to end your visit.