Seattle sits at the edge of a continent, hemmed in by water on three sides and backed by the Cascade Range. Elliott Bay to the west, Lake Washington to the east, and Puget Sound stretching north and south give the city its defining quality: you are always aware of being somewhere particular. On a clear day, Mount Rainier floats above the southern horizon, impossibly large and close, and the Olympic Mountains wall off the west. It is one of the most dramatically sited cities in North America.
The Emerald City earned its nickname from its evergreen forests, and even today the hills are thick with firs between the neighbourhoods. The city's character is harder to pin down — part tech boomtown (Amazon's headquarters occupies a campus-sized chunk of South Lake Union), part outdoors culture, part serious coffee town. Seattle invented the modern American coffeehouse; the original Starbucks is still pouring at Pike Place Market, though the independent roasters scattered through Capitol Hill and Fremont have long since surpassed the mothership.
Pike Place Market is the city's oldest continuously operating farmers' market and remains genuinely local despite its fame — fishmongers throwing whole salmon, flower stalls piled to the ceiling, bakers pulling cinnamon rolls at five in the morning. Nearby, Pioneer Square is Seattle's oldest neighbourhood, built on the ashes of the 1889 Great Seattle Fire and then literally buried when the city raised its streets — the original Victorian storefronts survive underground and can still be toured. The Space Needle rises from Seattle Center, a legacy of the 1962 World's Fair, and from its observation deck the full geography of the city becomes clear.
The neighbourhoods have distinct personalities. Capitol Hill is young, queer, loud, and full of excellent bars and restaurants. Fremont calls itself the Centre of the Universe with genuine affection and hosts a troll sculpture under a bridge and a Lenin statue from Slovakia. Ballard is old Scandinavian fishing-town character now overlaid with craft breweries and weekend brunch queues. The International District — a blend of Chinese, Japanese, and Vietnamese communities — has some of the best noodle shops in the Pacific Northwest.