Four days between the Sound and the mountains: glass domes and blown glass, a festival under the Needle, the market at opening, and coffee at the first Roastery before the flight home.
Scroll downDelta up on Saturday morning and back on Tuesday evening. Arizona doesn't observe daylight saving, so the clocks read the same in both cities this week: no time change to think about.
Both hotels include breakfast for everyone and will hold bags before check-in and after check-out. The Sunday-evening move is deliberate: it puts us four minutes from Pike Place Market for the last two days.
Sat 5 · 1 nightA short walk from Denny Park, the Spheres and Seattle Center, which is exactly where Saturday happens. We drop bags on arrival, sleep here Saturday, breakfast here Sunday, and leave the luggage at the desk until the evening.
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Sun 6 – Tue 8 · 2 nightsOn 2nd Avenue at Pine: four minutes to the market, three to Westlake light-rail station, and the Fog Room rooftop lounge upstairs on the 16th floor for Sunday's nightcap. Breakfast here on Monday and Tuesday.
Open in Maps →In the order they happen. Two are reserved already; the rest need tickets bought ahead or just showing up. The day-by-day plan below has the times and how we get between them.
Three glass domes holding a four-storey rainforest of 40,000 plants. Public visits happen only on select Saturdays, and ours is booked.
Seattle's Labor Day arts and music festival, spread across Seattle Center.
Concorde, the first jet Air Force One, a Blackbird and the shuttle trainer.
Eight galleries, a glasshouse and a garden where glass grows among the plants.
Glass benches, the revolving glass floor, Rainier to the south-east, and a 7:36 PM sunset if we linger.
Fish throwing, Piroshky, Beecher's through the window, the Gum Wall, then the new Overlook Walk down to the Great Wheel. Open on Labor Day.
Coffee flights at the Experience Bar, Princi pastry, and the roaster running in the middle of the room. Then a bakery crawl through Capitol Hill.
Flights, hotels and the two timed entries are fixed. Everything else is the intended order, with the walk, cab or train that connects each stop and what it costs for three. Weather is the forecast from the original plan: dry and clear all four days.
We land at 10:05, cab to the Holiday Inn Express, leave the bags and eat on Terry Avenue while rooms are made up. The early afternoon is Lake Union Park: seaplanes landing, the wooden-boat docks, and the walk down through the new Amazon blocks to the Spheres. At 2:30 we're inside the domes, then it's a twelve-minute walk west to Bumbershoot for the late-afternoon sets, dinner back inside the lit-up Spheres or at Tilikum Place Cafe, and either the festival headliner or an early night.
Late sun through the west glass of the Spheres is the photo.
Breakfast at the hotel, check out, bags at the desk, and a cab south to Boeing Field for three hours at the Museum of Flight. Lunch at the Armory food hall, then Chihuly at two, half an hour at the International Fountain, and across the plaza to the Space Needle for the 5:00 reservation. Collect the bags, move to the Charter, pizza at Serious Pie four minutes away, and finish on the 16th-floor terrace at Fog Room.
Rainier is the big cone to the south-east, behind downtown.
Early breakfast so we're in the market before the crowds, down the Overlook Walk to the waterfront and the Great Wheel, then south along 1st Avenue to Pioneer Square. The light rail takes us up to the University of Washington for the Quad, Rainier Vista and a cheap late lunch on the Ave, and straight back to Westlake, three minutes from the hotel. An hour off, then a cab up Queen Anne Hill for the Kerry Park sunset and a Creole dinner at the bottom of the hill.
Light breakfast, pack, bags at the desk, then the twelve-minute climb up Pike Street to the Roastery. From there it's a walk north through Capitol Hill to Bakery Nouveau, lunch around Broadway, an hour for the bookshop, the park and the oyster bar at Melrose Market, four minutes on the light rail back to Westlake, and a 2:45 departure for the airport with plenty of margin for holiday-week security.
Just one pastry at Princi. Bakery Nouveau is next.
The original itinerary has the bones. These are the details that change what we do: the holiday closures, the fare that went up, where the rideshares actually pick up, and what to order.
Skip the original Starbucks queue at the market. The Roastery is better.
For three people, using the $3 adult rail fare. Attraction tickets aren't included; the checklist below lists which to buy ahead.
| Day | Legs | Low | High |
|---|---|---|---|
| Sat 5 | Airport to Holiday Inn Express by cabEverything else on foot | $45 | $65 |
| Sun 6 | Cab to and from the Museum of Flight, bags to the CharterThree short rides | $46 | $65 |
| Mon 7 | Two light-rail rides, cab up to Kerry Park and back from dinnerRail is free for anyone 18 or under; Metro 2 or 13 up the hill is $2.75 | $40 | $48 |
| Tue 8 | One light-rail ride, cab to Sea-TacOr $9 by Link, no traffic risk | $54 | $74 |
| Four days | $185 | $252 |
Ticks are saved on this device only. Two entries are already reserved; the rest are quick to buy but sell out on holiday weekends.
Two flights, two hotels, two reserved entries and four days mapped stop by stop, with no blank hours left. Everything on this page comes from the family's itinerary, expanded with opening hours, fares and the things worth knowing before each door.