With wildfires affecting the surrounding area, our first day of the trip was completely up in the air until the day we left!

We were originally supposed to do a few hikes on our first day, but with the air quality still being unhealthy, we had to make a last-minute change of plans. Instead, we booked a hotel in Seattle and unfortunately had to eat the cost of the first Airbnb we had booked. It was worth it, though, because we really didn’t want to drive all the way to Enumclaw just to turn around and backtrack to Seattle.

So, our first day in Washington turned into an unexpected Seattle adventure!

We headed to the famous Pike Place Market with really no plan other than to walk around and eat our way through the market. We had scoured Instagram the day before while waiting for our plane to take off, which kept getting delayed, so we had a few places we knew we wanted to check out.

Our first stop was to take photos in front of the famous Pike Place Market sign! We got there pretty early, so the crowds really weren’t too bad yet, which made it much easier to get some pictures without a million people in the background.

Photos taken care of, we were off to find a coffee shop near the famous Gum Wall, Ghost Alley Espresso. We all got the Salty Nut Latte, along with their latte special, which was a latte with ube and salted caramel. The flavors were a little too subtle for me, but the caffeine boost was definitely required.

Also, when they say gum wall, they really mean gum hallway. I was not expecting that many surfaces to be covered in gum! 

After coffees, we headed over to the main part of the market where the famous fish booth was. And all of the bouquets of flowers were so pretty! 

We stopped at a few picture spots overlooking the waterfront, and the crowds were still pretty slim at this point. It was nice being able to walk around without feeling like we were constantly fighting through people.

After that, we walked over to Le Panier, a French pastry shop. Jordan and I split a ham and cheese croissant, and we stole a few bites of Caroline and Tyson’s chocolate almond croissant and strawberry brioche. We definitely should have ordered our own because it was so good, but it was probably for the best since we had a lot more food stops to go. 

Next on the food crawl, we had to try a piroshky. What is a piroshky you may ask? Well, according to the sign, it is a freshly baked hand-held pie with both savory and sweet fillings. Jordan had seen that they had a salmon filling, which is apparently a classic Seattle option, so we had to try that along with a cardamom and cinnamon braid. Caroline ordered a rhubarb and Bavarian cream piroshky.

Our next stop was Seattle Dumpling Co. The dumplings came out so fast! We were super stuffed at this point, so we couldn’t finish them all, but it was still great to try them.

At this point, we physically couldn’t eat anything else, so we decided it was probably time to actually do some sightseeing. I had found a walking tour that someone had posted on Strava, so we followed that route through the waterfront and Pioneer Square.

Pioneer Square was especially interesting because it is where the original Seattle city was before the Great Seattle Fire in the 1880s.

We were pretty close to the public library at this point, so we decided to walk over and check it out. I had seen on Instagram that they had a really cool reading room and a mysterious red room, so obviously we had to see them for ourselves.

The building itself was really cool, and the red room ended up being pretty interesting in a very weird way. It’s apparently a bunch of meeting rooms, but everything is red and there are supposedly 112 different shades of red! Why? I have no idea. 

After the red room, we went up to the reading room to check it out. The huge glass building was really neat to see out of from the top and definitely worth the stop.

After our library pit stop, we started walking back toward Pike Place Market to finish up our food crawl. There was a little incident before we made it back, though. We were waiting at a crosswalk when an electric bike came barreling toward us and ran straight into me on the sidewalk! It all happened so fast that I honestly didn’t even know what had hit me at first.

Thankfully, everyone around us was super nice and immediately started asking if I was okay. There was also a restaurant owner right there who took us inside, got me some water and a pack of ice, and made sure I was okay. He was so nice. (Thank you, Rob Wilson!)

The bike crash was so shocking that I didn’t really know what had happened at first. I ended up with a bruise on my knee and my ankle, but it could have been a lot worse. At that point, I was mostly just hoping I would still be okay to hike the next day.

Once I had recovered a bit, we set back off toward Pike Place Market. Somehow, we had worked up enough of an appetite to hit the last few stops on our food crawl. First up was Beecher’s, which is famous for its homemade mac and cheese. It was delicious, and I don’t even like mac and cheese that much! They also had a window where you could watch them making it, which was fun to see.

After some cheese samples, we walked over to Rachel’s Ginger Beer. This shop had a million different flavors of ginger beer to try! Jordan and I eventually settled on the caramelized pineapple, and oh my god, it was so good.

Ginger beer in hand, we walked over to a Japanese pastry shop. We had seen online that the green tea sesame ball mochi was really good, so we had to try it. We also added a red bean mochi ball. I was questioning whether I liked it or not after the first bite, but once we got into the filling, you could tell it was pretty tasty. 

We scarfed those down and then walked over to stop #4, Maíz, a small taco shop. We asked the cashier for her recommendations, and she picked out three tacos for us to try. One was carnitas, one was steak, and I can’t remember what the other one was! Two out of the three were amazing, and the other was good, just not quite as good as the others.

That was about all we could manage to stuff ourselves with, so obviously it was time for dessert!

Hellenika Greek Yogurt was highly recommended, so we headed over and tried some samples. I ended up with the ube coconut and blueberry flavors. Jordan got the Seattle Fog, which was an Earl Grey and blood orange flavor.

Our final stop was back at Pike Place Market so we could pick up some fresh fruit for the Airbnb and our hiking plans. The fruit guy was super friendly, helped us pick out which fruits to get, and even gave us samples.

We ended up with some Honeyzee apples, a few nectarines, a lot of Rainier cherries, and a last-minute addition of dried strawberry gummies because the guy gave us a sample and we obviously had to have them. He sold us when he mentioned they would make a great trail snack, too.

Okay, I lied. Our actual last stop was on the way out, when we got some apple cider. There were a bunch of different flavors to try, and it was super refreshing after walking around all day.

We Ubered back to our hotel and started our journey over to the Airbnb in Packwood! We dropped our stuff off quickly and attempted to go to a burger place, but it was closed, even though the hours said it was open! So we pivoted to the saloon, where we all really enjoyed our dinners.

After dinner, we got back to the Airbnb and started packing for a really exciting hike the next day, Skyline Loop. Apparently, it is the #2-rated hike in America on AllTrails, so we were super pumped to finally get out on the trail.

We ended up going to bed pretty quickly after we got back because it was going to be an early morning. We had a 5:00 AM leave time since the Skyline is so busy.

After such a chaotic first day, we were more than ready to finally hit the trails!