Spend the Day at Seattle Center

We are reminded today that we love Seattle Center ( www.seattlecenter.com)! Originally the site of the 1962 World’s Fair, Seattle Center is most famous for the iconic Space Needle, which was built for the fair. The views from the Space Needle observation deck and restaurant are amazing, and the restaurant revolves a full 360 degrees every hour.

We were in the Seattle Center neighborhood today to renew our Food Handler’s cards, so we stopped in for lunch at the Center House Food Court, and took it outside to eat in front of the beautiful International Fountain, looking up at Queen Anne neighborhood and the Space Needle. The sun was shining, and we had fun playing tourists.

Seattle Center is also home to many of Seattle’s theaters. In fact, a couple days ago we were at Seattle Center to attend Pacific Northwest Ballet’s lovely “Sleeping Beauty” at McCaw Hall. Julie is a former ballet dancer and still loves her season tickets! Here are a few of the other theater groups within this small part of town:

Bagley Wright Theatre
Book-It Repertory Theatre
Center House Theatre
Charlotte Martin Theatre
Eve Alvord Theatre
Intiman Theatre
Leo Kreielsheimer Theatre
Pacific Northwest Ballet
Poncho Theatre
Seattle Children's Theatre
Seattle International Film Festival (SIFF)
Seattle Opera
Seattle Repertory Theatre
Seattle Shakespeare Company
Teatro ZinZanni
The Vera Project
Theatre Puget Sound
Theatre4

We will be glad to find out what’s playing when you will be visiting us in Seattle!

Other attractions at Seattle Center include the famous Experience Music Project and Science Fiction Museum, Pacific Science Center, Children’s Museum, and Key Arena and Memorial Stadium for sporting events. You could easily spend a whole day and evening at Seattle Center.

Seattle is located just a 10 minute drive away from the Greenlake Guest House, and is also easily accessed by bus. Some of our guests take advantage of the less expensive parking at Seattle Center, and then take the monorail into downtown.

Dinner at Volterra in Ballard

We feel lucky to live in a city with such great restaurants! Last week we ate with friends at one of our favorites, Volterra, which is just a few minutes away in the Ballard neighborhood. Volterra offers "comtemporary Italian cuisine"...much more than your basic pasta! Blayne ordered the special, which was swordfish.......it was amazing! We were surprised to see Dale Chihuly dining just a few tables away. We are told that he designed the lovely glass windows in the restaurant. See their website at Volterra Restaurant.

Savor Seattle Gourmet Food Tour - "Field Trip"

A few weeks ago, we took a “field trip” on the Savor Seattle Gourmet Food Tour. If you enjoy exploring lots of different restaurants and trying new kinds of foods, this tour is for you! We especially enjoyed homemade sangria at Andaluca, and the wild mushroom pizza at Serious Pie! Oh yes, and the seafood risotto at that little restaurant at Pike Place Market was also incredible! In addition, we also sampled wonderful “tastes” from 20 or so hidden gems on a walking tour of Pike Place Market and downtown Seattle. The group was a nice small size, and we were able to hear everything with the headsets they provided. Our tour guide and Savor Seattle owner, Angela Shen, puts together a great tour. She is a wealth of information when it comes to gourmet food in Seattle.

We have also done the Savor Seattle “Classics” tour of Pike Place Market, and highly recommend it! We can’t think of any better way to be able to sample so much variety and personally meet the vendors at the Market. You can learn more about their tours here: http://www.savorseattletours.com/pages/20-About_Our_Tours

Doing “Research” for our guests is one of the best parts of the innkeeper job! We love having the opportunity to be tourists in our own town.