Seattle, from the market to the mountain.
Which Rainier day actually clears the cloud. Whether an hour under the streets is worth it. Where the coffee crawl beats the queue at Pike Place. Every Seattle tour, reviewed.
One spare day in Seattle, three ways out of town.
Nearly every visitor gives up a day to the country beyond the city, and the three directions are not interchangeable. Distance, season and how much of the day the road eats all differ.
Paradise, the wildflowers and the glaciers
The mountain that owns the skyline, close up. The high meadows at Paradise only clear of snow around July, and that short window is also when the summit is most likely to be out.
30 tours →
Hurricane Ridge and the rainforest
A peninsula with a rainforest on one side and an alpine ridge on the other, and a boat to get there. The longest day on this list, and the one people come home talking about.
15 tours →
A 268-foot waterfall and the valley behind it
The Cascades start thirty minutes east of downtown, and Snoqualmie Falls drops further than Niagara. Pair it with the wineries below the falls or push on to the Bavarian streets of Leavenworth.
24 tours →Pike Place, the mountain, the buried city.
The market before the crowds arrive, the mountain on the days it is out, the streets underneath the streets, and the boats that finally make sense of all that water.
Seattle’s most booked, starting under the street.
Every review →More travellers take these than anything else in the city. What each one is actually like, and what it costs.
1
Beneath The Streets Underground History Tour
Guided Pioneer Square walk that goes 120 years underground, linking Coast Salish roots to the Klondike Gold Rush.
From · $29.03
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 $45.70
6
Seattle City Highlights Tour
from $88.28
7
Space Needle & Chihuly Garden and Glass Ticket
from $67
8
Mt. Rainier Day Tour from Seattle
from $164.42
Pike Place is free to walk into. The good part isn’t the walking.
Nine acres of stalls above Elliott Bay, trading since 1907, and most visitors watch the fish get thrown and leave. The tasting tours go in before the queues build, get you behind the counters, and finish somewhere you would never have found on your own.
Seattle prices, from a ferry ticket up.
What a day here costs, cheapest first. Under $75 buys more of this city than most people expect.
Market tastings, ghost walks, the hour under Pioneer Square, harbour crossings and entry tickets.
- 1Beneath The Streets Underground History Tourfrom $29.03
- 2Chef Guided Food Tour of Pike Place Marketfrom $73
- 3Guided Underground Walking Tourfrom $31
The standard Seattle day: coffee crawls, chef-led food tours, sunset sails, the Boeing floor.
- 1Mt. Rainier National Park Highlights Tourfrom $150
- 2Seattle City Highlights Tourfrom $88.28
- 3Seattle City and Snoqualmie Falls Half-Day Guided Tourfrom $94
The long ones. Rainier and the Olympics door to door, private drivers, small-group days with lunch in.
Seattle only makes sense from the water.
The city was built facing Elliott Bay and it still shows. The skyline reads properly from a deck, the locks at Ballard lift boats between salt water and fresh, and the sunset sails keep going until the light gives out in September.
Three things only Seattle can show you.
Coffee towns, city walks and glass museums exist everywhere. A city buried under its own pavements, a widebody factory you can walk into, and the block where the coffee habit started do not.
The Buried City
The fire of 1889 took thirty blocks of wooden Seattle in a single afternoon. Rebuilding in brick, the city also raised its streets a full storey out of the tide flats, and simply left the old ground floors underneath. Guides take you down through them: shopfronts, pavements and skylights, still where they were, one flight below the pavement you queued on.
- 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
The Everett Floor
An hour north of the city, widebody jets are assembled inside the largest building in the world by volume. Tours walk the floor while aircraft move down the line, which is not a thing you can do anywhere else. Bags stay in the car, and children have to clear four feet to go in.
- 1Boeing Factory Tour with Guided Transport from Seattle★★★★★★★★★★ 4.5 · 1,247 reviews
- 2Boeing Factory and Future of Flight Tour★★★★★★★★★★ 4.5 · 363 reviews
- 3Boeing Factory Tour with Private Group Transport from Seattle★★★★★★★★★★ 4.5 · 13 reviews
The Coffee Crawl
The first Starbucks opened opposite the market in 1971, and the city has spent fifty years getting past it. A crawl through Capitol Hill and Ballard is where you find what replaced it: roasters cupping on the counter, and baristas who will argue about water temperature for as long as you let them.
- 1Seattle Coffee Tour: Capitol Hill Cafes, Tastings & Local Stories★★★★★★★★★★ 5.0 · 489 reviews
- 2Seattle Coffee Crawl-Small Group Tour★★★★★★★★★★ 5.0 · 240 reviews
- 3Coffee Culture Walking Tour★★★★★★★★★★ 4.8 · 84 reviews
Seattle after the light goes: Pioneer Square, and what’s under it.
All evening tours →
Haunted Seattle Booze and Boos Ghost Walking Tour
Read our review →Beneath The Streets Underground History Tour
Read our review →
Pike Place Market, Space Needle Iconic 1-Day City Tour in Seattle
Read our review →
Seattle’s secret is the summer, not the rain.
Less rain falls here in a year than in New York. What Seattle has is grey days, and they run October to April. July to September is one of the driest stretches anywhere in the country — the months when the mountain is out and the sails go up. Come in the wet half and the answer is a roof: the market halls, the glass house, a coffee counter, the streets under the streets.
- 1Beneath The Streets Underground History Tourfrom $29.03
- 2Chef Guided Food Tour of Pike Place Marketfrom $73
- 3Guided Underground Walking Tourfrom $31
The Seattle bookings that close before you land.
Most of this city can be booked from your hotel the night before. These cannot — they run on short seasons, factory rules and weekend slots that go weeks out.
- 01Beneath The Streets Underground History TourThe single most-booked thing in Seattle, in groups small enough that weekend slots go weeks ahead.
- 02Boeing Factory Tour with Guided Transport from SeattleFactory rules, not ours: no bags on the floor, and children must be four feet tall. Slots are fixed and few.
- 03Mt. Rainier National Park Highlights TourThe road up to Paradise is under snow into the summer. When it opens, those dates fill before the wildflowers do.
- 04Leavenworth Exclusive Tour from SeattleThe Bavarian streets are a December ritual, and the lighting weekends go long before the month starts.
The Space Needle is 1962. The glass next door is the reason to go.
Both stand on the old World’s Fair ground, a monorail ride from downtown, and almost nobody buys one without the other. The combination ticket is what most travellers end up holding; the rotating glass floor on the observation deck is the part they talk about afterwards.
Out of the city — by direction
South · Mount Rainier30 tours
West · Olympic Peninsula15 tours
East · Snoqualmie Falls24 tours
East · Leavenworth14 tours
Across · Bainbridge Island12 tours
North · Deception Pass8 tours
North-east · Woodinville8 tours- Every day trip →
New reviews, Ballard to Rainier.
All recent →
Enchanting Zipline , Camano Island and Deception Pass Tour
Read our review →
Full Day Seattle’s W2 Tour – Wineries and Waterfalls
Read our review →
Museum of Glass and Thea Foss Waterway Walking Tour
Read our review →
Whidbey Island and Deception Pass – Private Luxury Day Tour with Lunch
Read our review →
Private Seattle Tour: Craft Cocktails & Spirits Tasting
Read our review →
Seattle Glassblowing: Create Your Own, 2 Piece Experience
Read our review →
Wine Tasting, Vineyards in Eastern WA from Seattle
Read our review →
