What's the must-see thing in Seattle?

Pike Place Market is the right answer, and it's not close. The market has operated at 85 Pike Street since August 17, 1907, which makes it one of the oldest continuously running public farmers' markets in the country. Walk in from Pike Street around 9am and the cold Pacific air carries the salt-and-ice smell of the fish counters before you see them. The vendors at Pike Place Fish Co. hurl 15-pound king salmon across the counter with a wet slap that echoes off the low tile ceilings. Flower stalls along the main arcade sell tulip bunches for $5-8, dahlias for $10-12. The original Starbucks sits at 1912 Pike Place with its brown siren logo from 1971. The line wraps the corner by 10am. Skip it. Walk 50 metres to Ghost Alley Espresso at 1499 Post Alley instead, where the shots pull darker and the wait is 3 minutes. Below the main level, three floors of shops descend toward the waterfront. Most visitors never go past the first. The lower floors hold roughly 40 stalls, and by the third, foot traffic drops to almost nothing.

The Space Needle is the second stop, and you should know what you're buying. The tower went up for the 1962 World's Fair and stands 184 metres above the Seattle Center campus. Observation deck tickets run $37-43 for adults depending on your time slot. What you get is a 360-degree view of Elliott Bay, Mount Rainier to the south on clear days (which happen maybe 40% of June mornings), and the Olympic Mountains to the west. The rotating glass floor from the 2017 renovation does something to your stomach. You look straight down 150 metres to the lawn below and your body does not believe the glass is there. The whole visit takes about 45 minutes. That said, if Rainier is hiding behind cloud cover, the view loses its centrepiece. Check the National Park Service's Mount Rainier webcam before you book a slot. The Needle shares the Seattle Center campus with the Museum of Pop Culture, the crumpled-metal Frank Gehry building next door. MoPOP's adult admission runs $30, and the two sit 200 metres apart.

The Museum of Flight at 9404 East Marginal Way South is the attraction most first-timers skip, and it might be the best single museum in Seattle. It sits on Boeing Field, about 15 minutes south of downtown by rideshare or 30 minutes on the Route 124 bus from 3rd Avenue. Inside, the Great Gallery hangs 39 full-size aircraft from floor to ceiling in a glass atrium 6 storeys tall. You can walk through the cabin of a British Airways Concorde, sit in an SR-71 Blackbird cockpit mockup, and stand under the belly of a B-17 Flying Fortress that still carries a faint trace of hydraulic oil and old aluminum. The Air Force One pavilion holds the actual Boeing VC-137B that flew Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson, and Nixon. Admission runs $28 for adults, $19 for ages 5-17. Give it 3 hours. The Wings Café on the upper level serves sandwiches for $12-15.

The best first-day sequence runs Pike Place Market at 9am, lunch at Beecher's Handmade Cheese in the market (the $7 cup of mac and cheese is sharp, rich, and not tourist-trap food), then a 20-minute walk north on 1st Avenue to Seattle Center for the Space Needle by early afternoon. If your legs are done, the Seattle Center Monorail departs from Westlake Center, 3 blocks east of the market, for $3.50 and a 2-minute ride. Save the Museum of Flight for day two. Mind you, Seattle's layout catches visitors off guard. Downtown sits on a steep grade between Elliott Bay and Interstate 5. The walk from Pioneer Square up to Capitol Hill covers about 90 metres of elevation gain in 12 blocks. Wear shoes with grip. The sidewalks get slick when the afternoon drizzle rolls in, and it will, even in mid-June when the morning starts clear at 11°C.