Seattle Travel Forum

Hi there!

Thanks for taking the time to read this.

I am going to be flying in to Seattle this Saturday for 6 whole days.
- 4/20 - 4/26 (kinda cramped, i know!)

I would like to make the best out of the week in the Northeast.
About me:
- Really like nature/outdoors/beautiful drives
- Can tolerate touristy things but willing to make sacrifices here.

I would like to see:
- Vancouver
- Cool Parts of Washington
- Possibly Portland/parts of Oregon


I am traveling with my parents who are pretty flexible..

What would be a good way to get a decent feel for the area without being too cramped? Should I leave portland out?

I am in medical school now and I am strongly leaning toward doing residency in the northwest. This trip is to clarify my strong desire to be out there - possibly getting an idea of where I would like to be.

Thank you SO much for your insights!

If you're going for an exploratory trip to see where in the Northwest you'd like to live, then you should try to hit as many cities as you can. But, if you want to see the city like a tourist, you should spend your week in Seattle, possibly making a couple of day trips while there.
By Vancouver, do you mean BC or Washington? Vancouver, Washington is a suburb of Portland and not really that interesting. The more famous Vancouver is Vancouver, BC, but I'm not sure you'd be able to work in Canada.
Seattle is a nice city, and you could easily kill a week there. Portland's the same. Both Oregon and Washington have very, very different regions east of the mountains though. Spokane is a nice little city too, but very different from Seattle in climate and culture. It's also a very far drive.

haha.. yeah, doing the three cities seems pretty intense.

especially considering that each the whole region has such a wealth of experience to offer.
i'll probably end up leaving portland out of the trip - or, i could just do a day trip to see OHSU and grab lunch.


thanks for your response..

bocmaxima - thanks for the info.

i am definitely refering to vancouver, BC... more for fun than anything else. i hear it is a beautiful place.

How about something like this:
from SEA > portland
Sunday/Monday in portland (quick trip/get a general feel for the city)
Monday evening to Saturday in Seattle
- make couple day trips (Vancouver can be one of them)

is this a decent idea?
any suggestions for daytrips from portland or seattle?

Yes, Vancouver is a great place, but just bear in mind that coming from Seattle, it is about a 4-hour drive, and if the Blaine border crossing is very busy, which it usually is, this can lapse into 5-6 hours for the trip. I'd say that for your present purposes, try to look at where you might spend your residency (UW?), and take a good look around Seattle, and its neighborhoods.

For some great nature and/or mountain drives, you could drive to Mt. Rainier (about 2 hours; Sunrise is my favorite spot there), or take the wonderful North Cascades Highway (Rte. 20, longer drive). Other suggestions, outside of Seattle:
--Take the ferry across Puget Sound from Edmonds to the Olympic Peninsula, to explore historic and artsy Port Townsend. Continue your drive to Olympic National Park, and take the winding road up to Hurricane Ridge for superb mountain views and possibly a sighting of deer, mountain goats, or bear. Great hiking in the area.
-- Drive to Mt. St. Helens National Monument to see an active volcano smokin' away, and go on a hike.

I wish you good luck in planning your trip!

Marianne, thank you so much for the informative post.

4-6 hours.. ouch! i thought it was much easier to get from seattle to vancouver. maybe i'll just save vancouver for a different trip and focus on portland and seattle with the side trips that you mentioned.

thanks again!

You are very welcome. Portland is about 175 miles from Seattle, and expect some heavy traffic between Seattle and Olympia. Portland is a very nice city, and I'd recommend it for an overnight at least. You can stop in at Mt. St. Helens en route, if you like!

I think the advice to spend the bulk of your time near where you might also spend your residency is good. The timing of your visit is also good: we're having the cloudiest, coldest, rainiest Spring I can remember in almost 20 years here. Believe me, if you can tolerate several days of that during your visit, a longer stay is a shoo-in.

If I were in your situation, I'd spend 2-3 days just exploring the Seattle area. Seattle is compact enough to provide lots of interesting stuff to see and do without doing a lot of driving. In addition to the hard-core visitor activities (Pike Place Market, the waterfront, Space Needle, Pioneer Square) you might want to visit the city neighborhoods of Capital Hill, the U-District, Fremont, Ballard. They're all a little different from each other, and you'd probably be interested in figuring out in which neighborhood you feel most comfortable.

Then after getting some feel for how the city is laid out, it's time to get outta town for 2-3 days. With all the snow in the mountains this year, a trip to Mt Rainier might not be practical. But a Peninsula Loop might be quite do-able. Take a Washington state ferry to Bainbridge Island, then drive the Highway 101 loop counter-clockwise. ALong the way, you can visit POrt Townsend, Hurricane Ridge outside of Port Angeles, Crescent Lake, the *real* Pacific ocean (much wilder than Puget Sound), then back to I-5 via Aberdeen, thence north through Olympia and Tacoma to Seattle. If you like beautiful drives, all but the last stretch is quite lovely, even if the weather stays relatively crummy. It can all be easily driven in 2 days, if you're pressed.

Me: I'd skip both Portland and Vancouver, BC, this time. I love both of those cities for different reasons, but in only a week, I think the dull long drive South to Portland, and the typically long US/Canada border delays could prove discouraging.

Enjoy your trip, however it pans out.