8:00am: Arrive at Seattle–Tacoma International Airport and pick up your rental car through rentalcars.com. Total cost for two days: $35.26. Quick Tip: This is much cheaper than taking Uber from the airport – quoted at ~$40, one-way, and we think you’ll likely need to get a car to fully explore the city.

9:00am: Breakfast at Portage Bay Café, a cute and popular breakfast spot offering delicious, local, organic & sustainable foods. Brunch here is a MUST (recommending the Fritatta and any of the Pancake or French Toast dishes where you can head over to the breakfast bar and add your own toppings!

10:00am: Go to Pike’s Place Market, the largest public market in Seattle overlooking Elliott Bay. It’s full of fresh seafood, flowers (mostly tulips), little shops and spans 6 full levels, though our favorite is the top story! The market itself is built on a steep cliff. Each features a variety of unique shops such as antique dealers, comic book and collectible shops, small family-owned restaurants, and one of the oldest head shops in Seattle. The upper street level contains fishmongers, fresh produce stands and craft stalls operating in the covered arcades.

10:30am: Make sure you check out the Market Theater Gum Wall, a brick wall covered in chewing gum! It is located in Post Alley under Pike Place Market and the famous Beecher’s Handmade Cheese shop, where you can watch cheese being made right before your eyes (and sample plenty).

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11:00am: Head to the Space Needle. Admission for $22 per person at this time and features the most incredible view Seattle has to offering, with panoramic views of Mt. Rainer, Elliott Bay, downtown and the rest. If you needed to verify Seattle was a beautiful city, this is the proof in the pudding…

12:00pm: Hop in the car, grab a coffee and take a stroll through Pioneer square. Elm Coffee Roasters is a cute coffee shop in the area. House-roasted, single-origin brews are the specialty at this casual coffeehouse.

1:00pm: Head west to Marination at sixth and Virginia for a gorgeous view of the Seattle skyline, where you can sit in their outdoor patio overlooking the water. Marination’s Hawaiian-Korean cuisine melts delicate heat and the flavors of aloha together in your mouth – but gets busy, since it is right next to the water taxi station. So get here early if you want to get a spot on a sunny day!

2:00pm: Head to Alki Beach Park and have a drink at Duke’s Chowder House. On a nice day in Seattle, this spot will be filled with plenty of locals. It’s a beautiful beach with a great view of downtown Seattle. You can walk along the beach dipping your feet into the cold Pacific Ocean.

4:00pm: Head to Westward and grab some oysters QuickTip: Happy hour 3pm-6pm daily where one special oyster will be on sale for $2 each) and have a Chardonnay overlooking the Seattle city skyline. Reservation will only get you seated inside, but the trick is to get to the “first-come-first-serve” seating available outside, in one of the numbered chairs. There is also a nice fire-pit if the temperature gets chilly and blankets inside!

6:00pm: Check out rooftop at Mezcaleria Oaxaca, located on the west side of Capitol Hill. Awesome, local Mexican spot with a great rooftop featuring Happy Hour with good halibut ceviche and guac! Can skip the mezcal (we’ve had better in Mexico City) but head here for the ambience on a sunny day!

7:30pm: Starbucks Reserve Roastery & Tasting Room. This is a MUST, and I’m not a daily Starbucks coffee drinker! They have an awesome Nitro Cold Brew (hat’s literally cold brew that has been infused with nitrogen) that is pure caffeine, and will wake you up immediately. Apparently they are opening up one of these in New York (inside-info) but definitely worth checking out for some great coffee recipes, special tasting menus, and a full, functional coffee roaster.

9:00pm: Dinner at Sitka and Spruce. While their menu rotates very often, try to make a reservation and share an order of the duck breast and Charcuterie. Hands down one of the top 10 meals to date…

10:00pm: Wine bar Purple Café and Wine Bar is definitely worth checking out. Grab a table upstairs and browse through the colossal wine list, while you gaze over spiral staircase of local wines!

Day 2

9:00am: Get a latte and check out one of the best views of Seattle from Kerry Park, a 1.26 acres park on the south slope of Queen Anne Hill in Seattle, Washington, located at the corner of 2nd Avenue W. and W. Highland Drive. For breakfast, don’t skip seeing the Fremont Troll, an enormous troll statue under a bridge. Don’t need to spend more than 5-minutes with it, unless you are planning to make it your x-mas card…

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11:00am: If you rented a car, time to head to “Wine Country” in Seattle. First, make the 40-minute drive to Snoqualmie Falls. Known as being one of Washington state’s most popular scenic attractions, over 1.5M visitors come to the Falls every year. Great day-trip and the actual hike itself takes less than 35 minutes both ways. It’s a nice stretch of a hike to the bottom of the waterfall where you can snap some photos along the riverbed, and then head back up to the top where you can witness the actual power behind it!

12:00pm: Head to Woodinville Wine Country, located just 30 miles from downtown Seattle, Woodinville Wine Country is a unique haven where over 90 wineries, large and small, share a singular passion for wine. We didn’t have much time, but would recommend two stops: Chateau Ste. Michelle, where we recommend doing the wine tour with a free tasting and  JW Cellars, one of our favorite places, with good wine, an awesome botche ball court, family-owned, gorgeous place to spend an afternoon.

5:00pm: Dinner at Blueacre Seafood. Awesome seafood restaurant (we were lucky enough to have the three course dinner menu for $30 p/p during Seattle’s Restaurant Week and they let us bring a bottle of our own Chardonnay (corkage fee waived since we already opened the bottle!)

6:00pm: Drink at Tap House Grill. They offer 160 beers on tap, the largest selection of draft beers in the northwest along with lunch, dinner, happy hour, late night dining, etc. Lot’s to choose from here and worth browsing through the menu.

8:00pm: Head back to the airport to go back home

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Click here to view the list of places that we visited