My wife is in Seattle looking at a school right now, are there any BOTL familiar with the area? Any advice on things to do? Any thoughts about the area? Good/Bad places to live nearby? We are considering moving there, just looking for a little insight. Thank you for any advice you give!
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I moved two hours north of Seattle in December of last year. Ive been to the city probably 4x now and honestly I'm not that impressed. The weather is miserable, people always seem to be bundled up, homeless hippie beggers on the streets. The city has a unique feel thats hard to describe.

On the plus side it has pro sports and is right on the water
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Hmmm, thanks for the input. I love what most people consider "miserable" weather, but not really into homeless hippie beggers. How is the housing market where you are? (if you don't mind me asking)

I assumed you lived near Gettysburg, right now I'm not too far from there. Very cool history!
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Ashtonlady lives up that way, as well. I have been out there to visit a few times, and LOVE the area. My wife and I will be up there in October for a weekend. :-)
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I live in Seattle. Ballard actually. Housing is still expensive, our house came down in value about $100k, but has since started to move back up a little, this is probably seasonal as houses are worth between $30-$50k more in the spring and summer.

The politics is a horrible mess and getting worse, to the point that is actually affects normal people everyday, traffic is stupidly designed and a nightmare. The police out here are just there to harass you and hand out traffic tickets. If you have kids or are thinking of having kids, start saving now as the Seattle city school system is a joke. The east side is top notch however. Mass transit is the worst of any large city I have ever been to, so think bike or car.

There is great food, you can get excellent anything as long as you look enough, There is a level of food that is "good" that most tourists go to and come home talking about, to a Seattleite though that food is crap, if you look around and work at it you can find lots of Seattle "great" food, for anything from Mexican to Korean. Much of it as good as the country of origin.

Lots of great stuff to do outside, hiking, biking, sailing, fishing. You name it we have world class access to to it. Good Football, Soccer and ok Baseball. The UW mend basketball team has made it to the round of 32 or deeper the last three years in a row and they keep getting better, their games are a lot of fun, and remind me of NBA games when I was a kid, focused on the game and not some stupid t-shirt blimp.

Close to Canada, Vancouver and Victoria are both excellent cities to visit and you can purchase many nice things there that you cannot get here.

If she is looking at UW, it is a great school, As are some of the smaller schools in the area.

If you are looking to buy a house Seattle is broken into neighborhoods, much like NYC only smaller. For a house I would recommend Ballard, Magnolia, or West Seattle. They are all fairly quiet with great walking distance food and on the water. West Seattle is the cheapest as the commute can be difficult as there is really only one way in to Downtown from there.

If you have any questions please feel free to ask or PM me.
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Oh I forgot that your cigar smoking options are horrible. There is The Vertigo club which is a private club in SODO. It is very nice but it is basically your living room where you can smoke and your wife does not yell at you, and you pay a fee to use. The only other options are on Indian reservations which are about an hour away. There are some great B&M's though. J&J(home of the TaT SODO) and Rain City are the two best I know of.
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You might want to post in the mossback herf thread a pointer to this thread. That's the herf thread for the greater Seattle/Tacoma area. I lived in Seattle in the 80s, so my info is too dated to be of much use.

Commuting via either bridge is major suckage, so if you can swing it, avoid it.
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Wow you guys have seriously impressed me, thanks so much for all of your input.
Mychal, Thanks for the offer to PM. If I think of anything specific I will do.

I was thinking the upcoming cigar fest would be a great time to check out the city!
If only I can get my wife to buy into that!
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I lived and worked at the battlefield for two summers, its my favorite place and would do anything to move back there.

Right now I live in a town of about 12k people 5 miles south of the canadian border called lynden. Its a nice, well kept town but has pretty expensive housing like seattle. Im renting a two bed, two bath 1200 sq ft town house on a golf course and pay 1200 a month. Its decent but not really worth that much.
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I would love to go back in time and not buy my house. I was paying the same rent as you without the golf course before. Now my mortgage is well over twice as much and I don't even want my house. I would realisticly have an extra $1500 month if I kept renting. What was I thinking?
Well I thought I got a good deal because it was when the market just started to crash, I should have waited another year and saved another $60,000 like my neighbor did. I would sell today if I could get even close to what I owe.

Got a text from my wife saying the school in Seattle is beautiful!
She sounds really excited, well until I told her I got a speeding ticket this morning, then not so much. I should have kept that silent until she got home.
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