3 Days Trip to Seattle

Just concluded a three days trip to Seattle. It was not a holiday trip but a short visit to Seattle while on a business trip to San Francisco. It was a great trip, precisely for  -

• meeting my old friend and his family after a long time 
• to be at a place which is the HQ for great IT giants like Amazon and Microsoft 
• visit first starbucks coffee shop of the world, and 
• watching Boeing aircraft assembly line (747, 777 and 787 Dreamliner)

There are lots of things that can be done at Seattle. Tripadvisor lists following activities  - which personally did not excite me at first. I had always thought that since Seattle is in the north, there should be few places which would offer good natural sceneries, and you could see that Tripadvisor does not list them at all in the first page. However, a little google search and talk to locals could offer you advice not mentioned in official pages.

Click on Read More below for more details.

Day 1 - Snoqualmie Falls and Seattle Skyline

We decided to visit one of the most popular Washington's state scenic spot and it did not disappoint me. It is a 270 feet waterfall and it did have a good stream of water flowing through. Parking and visit is free and we saw people going down to have view from bottom. It is said that when the stream is thin, you could actually see the turbines installed at the bottom to generate electricity. We could not see the turbines as the flow was powerful.

Beautiful sight of the falls

Seattle has bunch of islands and there are ferries going from Pier67. We decided to go to the closest one, Bainbridge, as we did not have a full day to cover it exhaustively. I wanted to see Seattle Skyline from distance and it was an amazing view from the ferry. We chose a time that allowed us to see the skyline both in daylight and evening. It was a spectacular view and the weather was as clear and bright as anything you could ever imagine given the reputation Seattle carries. You could see Seattle's Space needle and other tourist attractions as well from here and marvel at the sheer beauty of the city.

Seattle Skyline

While gazing through this site, I happen to see this big giant ice-capped mountain at a far distance on the right and it immediately caught me through its beauty. Nothing closeby and it was like looking a monstrous object at a far distance. It as Mount Rainier (~14k feet). And I made up my mind to view it from a closer distance next day if possible. It would have been a great mistake not to go and see this if you are in Seattle.

Mount Rainier

Seattle is famous for its first Starbucks shop in the world which apparently is still running strong. We decided to end the day to visit the place and it was definitely exciting to see one historical coffee shop. The place is just round the corner from the ferry terminal.

Day 2 - Mount Crystal

We decided to instead go to Mount Crystal as it offers a panoramic view of Mount Rainier and others. It took us around 2 hours to reach Mount Crystal from Redmond. It was a lovely weather with no wind and clear sky offering spectacular view of the mountain ranges around. There were several ski tracks (which of course we could not do). One thing that disappointed me was that the restaurant atop didnt offer coffee or anything if you dont have a prior reservation :(

Atop Mount Crystal

Day 3 - Boeing Manufacturing Facility and Museum of Flight

While pursuing my MBA, I was fascinated by Kaizen philosophy of manufacturing cars. So, when I heard that just 30 minutes drive away there is a Boeing Assembly facility for aircraft that they had opened up for public view, I was too excited to go and see an assembly line for planes myself. And it did not disappoint me at all. For a 1.5 hrs paid tour, you could see how Boeing aircrafts like 747, 777 and 787 are built. We were not allowed to capture pictures once inside the plant, but I would say that this is something that you should not miss once you are in Seattle. 

After completing the tour, I then headed to Museum of Flights at Seattle and spend rest of the day looking at different aircrafts, world war history and planes used, space shuttle museum. If viewed correctly, you could easily spend up to 3-4 hours in this museum. I was definitely captured by the sheer number of planes they have put up in the museum, but the thing that caught my attention was display of Concorde and Airforce one planes. You could go up and see the inside of the planes. I had seen episode on Concorde fatal flight in France on NatGeo and, therefore, it fascinated me to see that supersonic flight down there. It looked awesome, particularly the sleek design and a pointed nose. 

Concorde

Well spent three days and saw few great things in Seattle. I'm sure there are tons of other things to see in Seattle, but Boeing, Mount Rainier, Concorde, Seattle skyline and amazing weather just made my trip awesome.