The market opens at nine. The mountain is two hours out.
Which harbour cruise actually gets you out past the grain terminal. What a chef-guided walk through Pike Place costs before the stalls fill. Whether Rainier or the Olympic Peninsula is the better single day away from the city. Reviews of every tour you can book in Seattle.
Out on Elliott BaySeattle’s Original Guided Harbor CruiseAn hour past the container cranes.from $39
Through the marketChef Guided Food Tour of Pike Place MarketNine stalls, most of it eaten standing up.from $32
Up to the mountainMt. Rainier National Park Highlights TourTwo hours south, snow into July.from $148 Under the old town, along the waterfront, out to Rainier.
Four bookings a first Seattle itinerary tends to hang off. What each one costs and what the people who took it say.
01The first afternoonBeneath The Streets Underground History TourPioneer Square sits one storey above the city that burned in 1889. The tour goes down into what is left of it.
02The market morningPike Place Market Tasting TourTastings along the stalls before the aisles jam. Come hungry and skip the hotel breakfast.
03The evening on deckEvening Colors Sunset Sail Tour in SeattleA sail out of Elliott Bay as the light goes. The skyline, the cranes and the Olympics in one turn.
04The mountain dayMt. Rainier National Park Highlights TourParadise, the old-growth on the way up and a glacier at eye level. The longest day on this list and the one people talk about.
Seattle only makes sense once you are out on the Sound.
The city faces the water on both sides and the good half of it is invisible from the pavement. Three kinds of day afloat, what it costs to get aboard each one, and how long you are gone.
Everything worth leaving Seattle for is inside three hours.
A volcano, a 268-foot waterfall, a rain forest, a Bavarian village and a tulip valley that only exists in April. Six days out of the city, and the best way to do each.
Rainier is the day everyone books and half of them get wrong.
It stands 14,410 feet over a city two hours away, and the road you want closes under snow for much of the year. The tours below leave early, carry the park entry, and know which gate is open this week.
Pike Place is the first stop. Coffee, crab and cocktails are the rest.
Nine acres of stalls above the waterfront, a coffee habit the rest of the country copied, oysters pulled out of the Sound and a bar scene in Capitol Hill that starts late. Book the market walk early in the morning; the aisles are shoulder to shoulder by eleven.
The Seattle days out more travellers take than any other.
Every Seattle tour we have reviewed →The tours that carry more travellers than anything else in the city, and what earns each of them the slot.
1
Beneath The Streets Underground History Tour
Walk beneath Pioneer Square with guides such as David, Patti, Imogen, and Sarah, hearing how Seattle grew from an Indigenous settlement into a major city. You’ll visit three 1890s underground spaces, walk four city blocks, climb three flights of stairs, and compare old Seattle with today’s streets.
From · $29
Read our review →2
Chef Guided Food Tour of Pike Place Market
from $73
3
Mt. Rainier National Park Highlights Tour
from $150
4
Guided Underground Walking Tour
from $31
5
Seattle’s Original Guided Harbor Cruise
from $45
6
Seattle City Highlights Tour
from $88
7
Space Needle & Chihuly Garden and Glass Ticket
from $67
8
Mt. Rainier Day Tour from Seattle
from $164
What a day in Seattle actually costs.
Every tour on the site grouped by price. The gap between a downtown walk and a day on the mountain is bigger here than in most cities, and it is mostly the drive.
Observation decks, museum entry, ghost walks and the tours that never leave downtown.
Market tastings, harbour cruises, the Boeing factory run and half a day at Snoqualmie.
- 1Chef Guided Food Tour of Pike Place Marketfrom $73
- 2Mt. Rainier National Park Highlights Tourfrom $150
- 3Seattle City Highlights Tourfrom $88
The full day out: Rainier, the Olympic Peninsula, Victoria by ferry, private drivers.
Three things this city has that nowhere else does.
Waterfront cities and coffee shops are everywhere. A buried downtown, a garden made of glass and a factory big enough to hold its own weather are not.
Beneath the Streets
The fire of 1889 took thirty blocks of Pioneer Square, and the city rebuilt one storey higher to fix its drainage. The old shopfronts and pavements were left where they stood, sealed under the new sidewalks. Tours drop into the passages that survived, which are dry, brick-lined and full of the sort of civic scandal nobody puts on a plaque.
- 1Beneath The Streets Underground History Tour★★★★★★★★★★ 4.5 · 8,006 reviews
- 2Guided Underground Walking Tour★★★★★★★★★★ 4.6 · 2,144 reviews
- 3Seattle Half Day Tour with Space Needle, Boat Ride & Underground★★★★★★★★★★ 3.5 · 9 reviews
Chihuly Garden and Glass
Dale Chihuly grew up in Tacoma and blew glass on the Sound before it made him famous. His garden at the foot of the Space Needle runs colour through the plants and holds a hundred-foot ceiling sculpture indoors. Go late: the lighting after dark is the reason the timed tickets exist.
- 1Space Needle & Chihuly Garden and Glass Ticket★★★★★★★★★★ 4.7 · 1,890 reviews
- 2Space Needle and Chihuly Garden and Glass Combination Ticket★★★★★★★★★★ 4.5 · 1,551 reviews
- 3Chihuly Garden and Glass Entry Ticket★★★★★★★★★★ 4.8 · 374 reviews
The Everett Factory
Boeing assembles widebodies in Everett inside the largest building on earth by volume, big enough that the air used to form its own clouds. The tour floor looks down onto 777s under construction. Bags are not allowed inside, so travel light or lose an hour to the lockers.
- 1Boeing Factory Tour with Guided Transport from Seattle★★★★★★★★★★ 4.5 · 1,247 reviews
- 2The Museum of Flight Entrance Ticket★★★★★★★★★★ 5.0 · 477 reviews
- 3Boeing Factory and Future of Flight Tour★★★★★★★★★★ 4.5 · 363 reviews
Downtown, the water, then the mountain: how a first Seattle trip usually falls.
Pike Place
Pioneer Square
Seattle Center
Capitol Hill
RainierFour Seattle bookings that will not wait for you.
Most of this city can be sorted the night before over a beer. These four run on timed entry, a ferry timetable, a snow gate and a flowering season that lasts three weeks.
- 01Space Needle & Chihuly Garden and Glass TicketEntry is sold in timed slots and the evening ones, when the glass floor is worth it, go first.
- 02Boeing Factory Tour with Guided Transport from SeattleThe factory floor runs on a fixed tour schedule, closes at weekends in parts of the year, and turns away anyone carrying a bag.
- 03Round Trip by High Speed Ferry to Victoria, BCThe fast ferry across the strait sails a couple of times a day, takes your passport at the dock and sells out through the summer.
- 04Tulip Festival in Skagit Valley Tour from SeattleThe Skagit fields flower for about three weeks in April. There is no version of this day in any other month.
Seattle drizzles from October to May. Book around it, not through it.
It is rarely heavy and it rarely stops, so locals do not cancel the day, they move it indoors and under awnings. The market has a roof. So does the buried city, the glass garden, the flight museum and every coffee bar on Capitol Hill.
By where the day goes
By kind of day — deck, market, trail or ticket
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