My First Trip to Seattle: What YouTube Didn't Tell Me

Before I ever set foot in Washington, I had already been to Seattle a hundred times on YouTube. Walking tours, coffee shop rankings, brewery crawls, “things I wish I knew before visiting” lists. The Seattle in those videos had mild weather, a coffee shop on every corner, more breweries than you could visit in a month, and one of the biggest tech scenes in the country. For a software engineer who runs on coffee, that sounded like my kind of place.

So for Halloween week, my girlfriend Zoey and I finally went, from October 24 to November 1. It was my first time in Seattle, my first time in Washington, and my first time on the West Coast at all.

Some of what YouTube told me was true. A lot of it wasn’t.

Before we even landed

We spotted the Space Needle out the plane window before the wheels touched down, which felt like the city showing off. On the ground, the first thing I noticed was the trees. There were so many of them, and the ones that had turned were a red so bright they looked fake. The second thing I noticed was the cold. It was 50 degrees when we landed, and it had been in the 70s back home.

A sidewalk covered in fallen red and orange leaves under a row of autumn trees beside a street

The $100 morning

Our flight got in at 8:30 in the morning. Check-in at our Airbnb wasn’t until the afternoon, and we had big suitcases and nowhere to put them.

We stood around the airport for a while trying to figure out what to do. The only luggage storage that showed up anywhere near the Airbnb was a shipping store in north Bellevue, so we took a Lyft there. That ride cost $80, or $100 after the tip. Then we paid again to leave our bags at the store.

Worried that every ride would cost that much, we started killing time on foot. We walked into the QFC next door and did laps. Not one lap. Several. Eventually we bought drinks at the Starbucks inside the grocery store, which is not how I pictured my first Seattle coffee. When Silver Platters, a record store nearby, opened, we went in and browsed. I didn’t buy anything. Then we sat on a bench outside the shipping store, next to our luggage, for about half an hour.

There was a restaurant next door, the Brief Encounter Cafe, so we finally went in for lunch. I ordered a Reuben and a bottomless cup of hot coffee, mostly to warm up my hands.

I’ll be honest: that morning wasn’t fun, and it isn’t one of those stories that was secretly funny at the time. We were cold. I kept adding up what we had already spent just to stand around in a parking lot, and I was starting to regret the whole trip and worry about how the rest of the week would go.

That afternoon we kept moving. We walked through Bellevue Square, then south to Bellevue Downtown Park, where we watched several very cute ducks, and then to Third Culture Coffee for the first time. We were still cold, and the trip didn’t turn around in one moment. But the views and the neighborhood took some of the stress off, and it was a start.

The wide lawn of Bellevue Downtown Park, edged by a long stone wall, with Bellevue's glass towers under a cloudy sky — Bellevue Downtown Park, that first afternoon.

Seattle weather in late October

Every video warned us about gray skies and rain, especially in late October. It rained twice the whole week, and one of those was a light drizzle. The rest was mostly cloudy with some sun breaking through. It wasn’t gloomy or depressing at all. It was much nicer than anyone had told us it would be.

It was cold, though, at least for us. We layered up, and after the first day I bought a set of thermals from Uniqlo. I wore them exactly once. I adjusted to the cold faster than I expected.

Staying in Bellevue vs. downtown Seattle

On the map, Bellevue sits right across Lake Washington from Seattle. We figured staying there would be easy, and that the light rail would get us anywhere we wanted to go.

Our Airbnb was a condo across the parking lot from a QFC, a few minutes’ walk from Bellevue Square and minutes from downtown Bellevue and the nearest light rail station. For Bellevue, the location was great. For Seattle, it wasn’t.

The light rail worked for some trips, but getting from downtown Seattle back to the condo took almost an hour. Anywhere it didn’t go, at least not quickly, meant a Lyft, and Lyfts from Bellevue to places like Ballard or the airport were not cheap. By the end of the week we had spent close to $1,000 on rides.

The one transit surprise was a good one: Lime scooters and bikes, everywhere. We don’t have them where we live, so zooming around downtown Bellevue on scooters ended up being one of the most fun parts of the trip. Mostly. One day we tried to ride Limes from Redmond to Kirkland, and partway there the scooter decided it was done and refused to go any farther. We walked the rest of the way.

20,000 steps and a ride from the police

On our first Sunday, we took a Lyft to the Fremont Sunday Market. We didn’t buy anything at the market, but we got coffee at a shop nearby and walked to the Fremont Troll, which is much bigger in person than it looks in pictures.

The Fremont Troll, a huge concrete troll under a bridge, one hand gripping the ground beside a set of steps — Even this picture makes it look small.

Then we decided to walk to Queen Anne. I had prepared for Seattle to be hilly. I had not prepared for the climb from Fremont. Once we crossed the bridge, it was uphill, nonstop, until we reached Queen Anne. We earned our lunch at Hilltop Ale House.

The steel arch of the Aurora Bridge over the Fremont Cut, with marinas and autumn trees along the water under gray clouds — The view from the bridge out of Fremont, just before the climb.

From there we walked down to Lower Queen Anne, stopped at the Space Needle for pictures, walked the piers along downtown, and kept going all the way to SoDo for the Georgetown Morgue Haunted House, a haunted house in an old morgue. It wasn’t scary, and it was very short for the price. That’s after I paid extra for priority entry to skip the line.

Lumen Field lit up at night, its roof arches glowing blue under a cloudy sky — Lumen Field, on the long walk to SoDo.

When we came out, it was dark, we had walked over 20,000 steps, and Lyft wanted about $80 to get us back to Bellevue. So we asked a couple of police officers for the cheapest way home and told them our whole story: we weren’t from here, and we had walked all the way from Fremont. At first they figured we would have to pay for the Lyft, because they didn’t want us walking through SoDo that late at night. Then they told us to wait, stepped away to radio someone, and came back to say they were having their rookies come pick us up and drive us back to our Airbnb.

So in a week of $80 rides, the only free one came from the police. I went to bed that night with the biggest dehydration headache I’ve ever had.

Is BOO Seattle worth it?

The night before Halloween started with a wine tasting at the Browne Family Vineyards tasting room and a walk through some art galleries. Then we went to BOO Seattle, a Halloween rave at WaMu Theater with three separate stages. We got there just after 5, and my favorite stage was the Bassment.

We had VIP tickets, which got us a more private bar and bathrooms, and a place to sit down. They didn’t get us any special access to the Bassment, though, so they weren’t really worth it.

The BOO Seattle VIP entrance, a wooden gate with a red BOO Seattle VIP sign over a painted backdrop of a spooky bridge, all lit in red — VIP was mostly a place to sit down.

I didn’t wear a costume, exactly, but I did wear a trippy hoodie I got at Meow Wolf in Denver, and it got me a few compliments in the crowd.

Honestly, unless you’re a huge raver, I don’t think BOO Seattle is worth it. The venue was pretty mid, and the bass was nothing compared to my time in Denver. If you go, one night is plenty. Both nights is overkill.

We left around 8:30, because the Airbnb was all the way in Bellevue and we were worried we’d have no way back if we stayed any later. We rode Lime scooters for a while, then took the light rail to Mox Boarding House, a board game shop that also serves food and drinks, which we had already been to that week. This time we couldn’t find anything to play.

Of the two Halloween parties we went to, I liked the one with the dogs better.

Halloween in Ballard

On Halloween we went to Ballard for the Spooktacular Pup Party at Obec Brewing, which was exactly what it sounds like: dogs in costumes, everywhere. There were too many to remember, but two have stuck with me: a golden retriever dressed as a lion, and a bumblebee that thankfully didn’t sting. We didn’t dress up. The dogs had it covered.

A yellow dog in a fuzzy bumblebee costume, standing on a leash beside a picnic table — The bumblebee.

What surprised me about Ballard was how many breweries there were, all within walking distance of each other, and each one had its own food truck. I got a slice of pizza from the truck at one brewery, and at Obec I ordered Thai food, one order for each of us. Each one was huge, so we split the first and couldn’t touch the second. It was our last night before flying home, so I gave the other order to a homeless couple.

Pike Place, and the food

The red Public Market Center sign and clock above Pike Place Market on a gray, wet day, with people crossing the street below

Pike Place Market got most of a day. I don’t remember everything we ate there, but I know there were Asian pastries. We watched the fish throwing. We saw the gum wall, which grossed us both out. We walked past the original Starbucks and did not wait in that line.

The gum wall in Post Alley, its brick covered in layers of chewed gum, stretching down a covered alley

Food overall was the biggest letdown of the trip. We ate a lot of sushi, at several restaurants and, more often than I’d like to admit, from the QFC across the parking lot, which was cheap and not good. Nothing we ate felt worth what it cost.

A coffee city with mostly ordinary coffee

Coffee was one of the two reasons I wanted to visit, so this one hurts a little. I went to a lot of coffee shops. Out of all of them, exactly one cup tasted like something special: a cortado at Third Culture Coffee in Bellevue, where I could really taste the cherry in the espresso. We went back later in the week. Everything else just tasted like normal coffee.

The shops had another problem. A lot of them were full of people who had clearly settled in for the day, with laptops, monitor stands, and second monitors set up on the tables. Nobody else could walk in, sit down, and drink a coffee.

That was also where the other reason I came, the tech scene, showed up. Especially in Bellevue, I saw people everywhere wearing name tags from Meta, Microsoft, and other big tech companies.

The Seattle Freeze, mostly

The videos also warned us about the “Seattle Freeze,” the idea that people there are polite but distant. We tried to go to places that would be more social, and the bars we went to were friendly. Outside of them, it was real.

In Bellevue I kept seeing people with the same style of name tag on a lanyard, and I got curious. So I asked one guy walking by where his name tag was from. He didn’t answer. He just kept walking. At one of the breweries in Ballard, the employee who served us wasn’t friendly or interested in talking either.

The exception was the first time we used the light rail. We didn’t know which platform to stand on or which train to take, so I asked a guy at the station, and he helped us out. He turned out to be a software engineer at Uber, so naturally I asked him about the interview process, how long he had worked there, and what tech stack he uses. Not everyone in Seattle is frozen.

The other thing I didn’t expect: there isn’t much to do at night if you don’t want to drink. A few nights, after having some drinks the night before, I wanted a quiet evening without any, and everything around us was a bar. One of those nights we went to Mox Boarding House, bought a Connect 4 set, and took it back to the condo. We played until bed.

Would I go back?

Absolutely. It’s a beautiful city, and the trees alone were worth the trip. I love traveling in the fall, so I could see myself going back this time of year, but I’d also like to see a Seattle summer, when I’ve heard it’s warm without being hot and there’s a lot more sun.

Next time, I’d stay in downtown Seattle, somewhere near Pike Place Market, so Ballard, Fremont, and Queen Anne are close. I loved Bellevue, but I didn’t need to be there every day.

Our last morning made that case for me. The alarm went off at 4. We snoozed it until 5, then showered, cleaned up, packed, and locked up the condo at 6. Our Lyft driver showed up about 10 minutes later and drove a couple of blocks of downtown Bellevue on the wrong side of the road, long enough that Zoey and I weren’t sure we were safe in that car. We got to the airport around 6:30 for an 8:20 flight, found it packed with far more people than I expected at that hour, and worried about security the whole way through the line. We made it.

If you’re planning your first trip to Seattle, here’s what I’d tell you: plan carefully, stay close to a light rail station, because you won’t get far without a car, and start saving early, because it’s expensive. Then go anyway. Bring layers. You’ll probably need fewer of them than you think.