See Seattle from up high this season
Credit to Author: Dave Pottinger| Date: Sat, 16 Nov 2019 06:21:26 +0000
Seattle is familiar turf to most residents of southern B.C. We share the same love of coffee, craft beer and seafood, and tolerate the same wet weather.
But even if you’re a frequent visitor to the Emerald City, you might gain a different perspective of it from the top down. Seeing Seattle from way up high — from the Smith Tower, the Great Wheel, the Columbia Center’s Sky View Observatory and the iconic Space Needle — you get a better lay of the land than you do at ground level.
Start with a Happy Hour cocktail at the Smith Tower, Seattle’s first skyscraper, built in 1914. I ordered a Yesler Old Fashioned with rye and walnut bitters in the speakeasy-style bar and later strolled the open-air, wrap-around observation deck with Pioneer Square 35 floors below and Mount Rainier in the distance.
The Great Wheel’s shadow from its gondola.
One of the things you’ll spot on the waterfront is Seattle’s Great Wheel at Pier 57. Decked out in thousands of LED lights, the giant Ferris wheel puts on a spectacular light show every evening, with special Christmas-themed light shows coming up during the holidays. During the day, the views of Puget Sound, mountains and the city skyline from the enclosed gondolas are also worth the ride.
The Space Needle recently got a $100-million reboot: Walls, security fencing and steel floors have been replaced by outward-tilting glass on the observation deck for unobstructed 360-degree views. Standing on the rotating glass floor, you’ll feel like you’re floating over the city, 520 feet below.
A view of the Emerald City from the Sky Needle Observatory.
And you can even view the Needle from above. Columbia Center is the city’s tallest building and the Sky View Observatory is on the 73rd floor. On a sunny day, you can see the Olympic Mountains to the west over Elliott Bay, the Cascades to the east over Lake Washington, Mount Rainier to the south and the Space Needle to the north.
But you’ll have to come back down to earth sometime, likely after working up a bit of a thirst and an appetite. And on that score, Seattle doesn’t disappoint.
Motif Seattle’s rooftop lounge has views across the city.
We hadn’t even checked in to our room at the Motif Seattle hotel when the concierge offered us a glass of wine. It was only 1 p.m., but so what? The recently refurbished downtown hotel offers a free tasting of Washington wines from 1 to 8 pm in the lobby. The hotel’s Frolik Kitchen + Cocktails served up a casual first-evening meal — we’re still wondering how a dish of Romanesco broccoli and Brussels sprouts could be so delicious.
The next evening, we took a taxi to Capitol Hill for dinner at Adana, which bills itself as the home of Japanese comfort food. The tasting menu created by chef Shota Nakajima was nothing short of amazing. Every dish seemed to be sprinkled with umami, from the agedashi tofu with wild mushrooms to grilled octopus with beet puree to black cod with pickled pears. With a few glasses of premium sake, it was a meal to remember.
We spent our last night at the Kimpton Vintage Hotel and couldn’t pass up a decadent brunch at Tulio, the award-winning Italian restaurant. Brunch started with a Bloody Mary, and moved on to perfect poached eggs and a decadent house-made cinnamon roll.
The speakeasy and observation deck at the Shaw Tower.
That fortified us for a visit to the Seattle Art Museum, just a few blocks away. The stunning centerpiece of its lobby is Middle Fork, a huge suspended sculpture made of thousands of pieces of reclaimed old-growth cedar that recreates the contours of a 140-year-old western hemlock tree.
Inside its galleries, Flesh & Blood is a well-curated exhibition of 17th-century Italian masterpieces by renowned Renaissance artists, including Raphael and Titian and Baroque masters such as Cavallino, is on display until the end of January. And check out Octopus Wrap by Brazilian artist Regina Silveira, the latest installation at the museum’s Olympic Sculpture Park — it wraps the Pavilion’s walls in a mind-blowing pattern that questions our perception of reality.
Before we had to head home, we stopped in at Aerlume, just a few blocks away from the Pike Place Market on the waterfront, which shines with light and sweeping waterfront views and the seasonal menu is a farm-forward winner. A starter of grilled octopus with hummus and chimichirri was so good that we considered ordering another. I contented myself with slurping back all of my wild mushroom and goat cheese dumplings and spearing one of my dining companion’s falafels.
Boosted by brilliant chefs like Adana’s Shota Nakajima and Aerlume’s Jason Wilson, Seattle’s culinary scene just keeps getting better.
Where to Stay
Seattle is pedestrian-friendly and blessed with an extensive transit system, including the monorail to the Space Needle. Motif Seattle and the Kimpton hotels are located downtown, within walking distance of most everywhere we wanted to go. Like Motif Seattle, Kimpton’s Hotel Vintage also offers guests free wine in the lobby in the afternoons. As a bonus, both Motif and all the Kimpton hotels welcome dogs.
The writer was a guest was a guest of Visit Seattle, which neither read nor approved the article before publication. See visitseattle.org for more information.