Seattle

Way more than just a market, 110-year-old Pike Place is a living community, a cabaret show, a way of life and an intrinsic piece of Seattle’s soul. Strolling through its clamorous, sometimes chaotic thoroughfares, you simply couldn’t be in any other city. There are fish that fly, shops that look like they’ve sprung from a Harry Potter movie, an art wall made out of chewing gum, and a multitude of lively old buskers jamming acoustic versions of Led Zeppelin songs outside the world's oldest Starbucks. Pure magic.

The city icon that is as synonymous with Seattle as the letters S-E-A-T-T-L-E was built for the 1962 World’s Fair, and in 2018 got a face-lift to bring it into a new era. Although it's no longer Seattle's tallest structure, one million annual visitors still squeeze into the Space Needle’s slick, speedy elevators to enjoy views that are best described as awesome. Granted, tickets are expensive and you'll be elbow-to-elbow with tourists, but stop complaining and get in line: this is an essential Seattle pilgrimage.

Paying homage to the left-handed, guitar-burning musical genius that was Jimi Hendrix, the architecturally bizarre Museum of Pop Culture is the brainchild of Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen. It's an apt memorial to a region that has been a powerful musical innovator since the days of local boy Bing Crosby. Come and see the legends and how they were created, from Hendrix to Kurt Cobain, or experiment with your own riffs in the interactive Sound Lab. Marrying Captain Kirk with Nirvana Kurt is the on-site 'Infinite Worlds of Science Fiction' exhibit, where Star Trek meets Doctor Who.

Tap the average Seattleite about their most cherished weekend excursion and they could surprise you with a dark horse – a cheap and simple ride on the commuter ferry across Puget Sound to Bainbridge Island. There’s nothing quite like being surrounded by water and seeing Seattle’s famous skyline disappearing in the ferry's foamy wake, the only commentary the cry of the seagulls and the only entertainment the comedic antics of escaping families bound for a day out on the nearby Olympic Peninsula.

Seattle likes to display its art out in the open with no holds barred. Sculptures and statues decorate parks, streets and squares, from the weird (a stone troll underneath a bridge), to the iconic (Hendrix in classic rock-and-roll pose), to the existential (a group of people waiting for a bus that never comes). The city even has its own sculpture park, an outpost of the Seattle Art Museum that spreads its works across a beautifully landscaped outdoor space overlooking glassy Elliott Bay.

Every rainy day in this city is just another opportunity to warm up with a cup of joe. Seattle practically invented modern North American coffee culture, thanks to a small store in Pike Place Market that went global: Starbucks. But, while the rest of the world has been quick to lap up the green mermaid logo, Seattle has moved on. Starbucks is merely the froth on the cappuccino in a city where hundreds of small-scale micro-roasteries, cafes, baristas and knowledgeable caffeine connoisseurs continue to experiment and innovate.

Belltown, the high-spirited neighborhood where flannel-shirted grunge groupies once practiced their stage-dives, is now better known for its restaurants – cramming over 100 of them into a strip abutting downtown. Considered a microcosm of Seattle’s gastronomic scene, this UN of food places a strong emphasis on ‘locavore’ cuisine, showcasing ingredients from Seattle’s adjacent waters and farms. Look out for artisanal bakeries, sushi, creative pizzas, Basque-style tapas, Greek fusion, make-your-own poke bowls, seafood from Pike Place Market and homemade pasta, served around communal tables.

While other neighborhoods have their tourist shrines, Capitol Hill has its people and its culture – both thoroughly eclectic. Although the neighborhood has faced gentrification issues in recent years, its wonderfully offbeat soul is ever present. There are dive bars in old autoshops, cabaret venues where folks across the spectrum of gender and sexual identity perform to enthralled crowds, body-positive sex shops and enough vinyl and books to make you think that Amazon.com never happened. Welcome to Seattle’s most colorful 'hood. Visiting isn’t an option – it’s a duty.

Seattle justifies its ‘Emerald City’ moniker in the rugged confines of 534-acre Discovery Park, a one-time military installation reborn as a textbook example of urban sustainability. Speckled with Douglas fir trees, hunting eagles, log-littered beaches and wild meadows, it resembles a lonely tract of Pacific Northwestern wilderness picked up and dropped into the middle of a crowded metropolitan area. Come here for breathing space, coexistence with nature, and a chance to slow down and reflect on the magic that lured people to Seattle in the first place.

Even people with absolutely no interest in aviation have been known to blink in quiet astonishment at the Museum of Flight, which tells the tale of how humankind got from the Wright Brothers to the first moon landing in less than 66 years. Get ready for an exciting jet-propelled journey through war, peace, space rockets and inspired engineering, eloquently related with the aid of film, words, flight simulators, famous decommissioned aircraft, and a man called William E Boeing, who transformed how we travel and the city of Seattle itself.

A one-time fishing village founded by Nordic immigrants, the Ballard neighborhood has been reincarnated as Seattle’s beer capital with enough bars in its own right to satisfy a city. Boldly experimental, Ballard's small breweries concoct big flavors that are served in a cornucopia of drinking establishments. There are nano-breweries, brewpubs, old-school biker hangouts, tasting rooms, whiskey bars, sports bars, dives peddling rock, and bars with book corners. Bonus: once you’re done with the booze, you can immerse yourself in Ballard's unique Nordic Museum and a necklace of waterside parks.