Pike Place & Waterfront Walk

Welcome to Seattle, and welcome to Westlake Park. It's a small plaza, only about a tenth of an acre, but it's often called the city's town square. Celebrities and political figures often appear or give speeches from the balcony of the shopping center across the street. The park opened in 1988, designed by Robert Mitchell Hanna.

Across Pine Street is Westlake Center, the shopping mall that also connects to the Seattle Center Monorail and to Westlake light rail station, so this corner is one of the city's busiest transit hubs. The name comes from Westlake Avenue, which used to run two blocks farther south, right through where the mall and park sit now, before the street was cut back. Take a second to get your bearings. The land slopes down to the west toward the water, and that's exactly where we're headed first, to one of the most famous markets in the country.

Here it is: Pike Place Market, open since August 17, 1907, and one of the older continuously operating public farmers markets in the United States. The market takes its name from its main street, Pike Place, and the founding idea still shows up on signs around here: meet the producer. Farmers and craftspeople rent tables in the covered arcades by the day, so the person selling you peaches or a hand-thrown mug may well be the one who grew it or made it. The market is built on the edge of a steep hill, so under the main level there are several lower floors packed with small shops, from comics and collectibles to antiques.

Before you move on, find Rachel, the bronze pig under the sign. She's a piggy bank weighing about 550 pounds, created by local artist Georgia Gerber and placed here in 1986. She was modeled on a real pig named Rachel from Whidbey Island. The coins people drop into her are collected by the Market Foundation to fund the market's social services.