SEATAC Airport Food Survival Guide – Seattle
An oft-overlooked area in travel writing is airport survival. Some airports, like Hong Kong, have restaurant-worthy food options at arm’s reach. Standards in the US are somewhat more modest. JFK’s terminal 5, pretty-as-it-is, is a food desert. SEATAC falls on the slightly-better-than-average space on the spectrum. There are decent eats to be had, if […]
Pike Place Market and the Bubblegum Wall – Seattle
So, first question: is pike place market worth an afternoon? The answer is a qualified “yes”. If it’s your first trip, definitely go. The street theater, like the fish-tossing-guys, is entertaining, and, lest I forget, this is a *real market*, with fantastic produce, seafood, flowers, and other odds-and-ends. Try samples, eat at one of […]
Puget Sound Ferry Mini-Road Trip – Seattle
If it’s your first visit to Seattle, or even if it’s not, it might be worth your while to take the ferry across Puget sound to either Bainbridge Island or Bremmerton, drive up the strait, and take the Kingston ferry back. I’ve termed this a “mini-road-trip.” Once across the sound, stuff gets rural. In […]
Boeing and The Future of Flight Tour – Seattle
It’s easy to appreciate one of America’s great companies and the real-life sci-fi movie set its factory contains if you’re a nerd like me. I’m going to go out on a limb, though, and argue the Future of Flight tour at Boeing’s Everett, WA factory has far broader appeal. True, it’s part science fiction, […]
Travel Hacks – Uber
Photo by Diego Torres Silvestre If you’ve ever tried to hail a cab in the rain, negotiated one price with a driver and ended up paying a different one when you arrived, or schlepped your luggage up or down the subway stairs because you thought it would be impossible to get a cab, get […]
Travel Hacks – Car Rental
I was all set to publish a review lauding the virtues of the mainline agencies like Hertz, Avis, and Entreprise, and lamenting that their primary competition, Zipcar, hasn’t yet delivered on its promise to a sufficient degree to be taken seriously – then reality intervened. SEATAC, this week, Hertz counter – Agent: The car […]
The Underground Tour – Seattle
Seattle’s now-famous underground tour could go one of two ways – either it’s a kind of sex-and-the-city tour of the 1890s – one in which you grow to know a few key “characters” in Seattle’s history and appreciate the locations for their significance in the story, or it’s a mildly-interesting set of cellars with […]