Blogging Seattle

May 14, 2008 - Bernard and I spent four days last week in Seattle! It was a fairly last minute trip, as we didn't decide to go until just two weeks ago. Anyway, we had a blast and I thought I would blog about some of the things I observed while in Seattle. This blog will focus on my general impressions of the city.

Seattle is the largest city in the State of Washington, but with a population of just over half million people (and a Metro population of 3 million), it is much smaller than most US west coast cities and even smaller than Toronto. The city itself is also not as spread out as one would think - it only took about 20 minutes by bus to go from Downtown to the city's north end. Seattle is also very multicultural, with a large Asian population. The city also has that "Toronto" feel to it - an up and coming city that is getting bigger by day, but still holding on to its small town values. Walking around Seattle actually didn't seem too different from walking around Toronto (though I think it's also because we kept seeing Asians everywhere).

Seattle is also not a dense city. There are not that many tall buildings outside downtown and it certainly does not have the 30+ storey condos that we have in Toronto. Construction seems to be everywhere though, but mainly in the form of office towers. Outside downtown, single detached home dominate, but I didn't really see the kinda of urban sprawl that we have here in the 905 region.

What I really liked about Seattle is its topography - the hills, the mountains (you can see snow-capped Mount Rainier from everywhere on a sunny day), Lake Union, and Elliot Bay are all spectacular. It's not Vancouver, but YVR doesn't have the islands of Puget Sound either. Having said that, with over 225 days of the year being a cloudy day, I really don't think I can live there (it was gloomy and cold the first two days we were there).

Seattle is also one of most educated cities in the US (which no doubt contributes greatly to the city's computer and aviation industries) and also one of the fittest (though we didn't really check anyone out since everyone was still wearing their winter jacket). It is also one of the gayest cities in America (just behind San Francisco apparently)!

In my next blog, I'll talk about riding transit in Seattle!