For spring break, half the country and many people from overseas come to where we live. We want a break too, so are looking for a non-Floridian place to go. My son has recently been interested in living in Seattle (he likes rain) so I’m thinking of a couple days there.

We had a busy New York trip a few years ago. Met up with friends in Central Park and Washington Square; they took us to kid-friendly places to eat pizza, ice cream, and Chinese food. Did the night at the Museum of Natural History and a boat tour (a small sailboat that served brunch) around Manhattan, went to the recently-opened Math Museum. Most of those may have been hits, individually, and I think he enjoyed renting City Bikes (his idea) and learning to play chess in Zuccati Park (spontaneously), but overall he was worn out, hated being dragged from place to place. We liked our hotel’s rooftop restaurant, and we had a cool view of the 9-11 memorial being built directly below our window. Going to Disney has not allayed his fear of death by over-scheduled vacationing.

My choice of a place to vacation with him would be Philadelphia, because it apparently has a central city with lots of interesting things to do in a small place, so you can just hang out, sipping your beverage and soaking up the vibes of the city, as he wants to do, and then go investigate something nearby. He says inspiration will eventually strike, and then he/we will want to do something. I think it will come a lot more easily if you can see fun things from where you are sitting.

So my question is: where in Seattle can we have a vacation that’s like my Philly dream, and not like his NYC reality?
I’ve never been there, and have two competing ideas of what it’s like: lots of coffee shops and craft breweries where you can watch the world go by, and a really spread-out kind of place where what you’ll see if you don’t know where you’re going are miles and miles of roads. Either way, it would help to have the right jumping-off place and an idea of what things there are to jump off to.

We will also need a place to stay, of course. He likes high modernism, hot tubs, and relaxation. I don’t want him spending hours in the room—that misses the point of travel—but if it has both an outdoor cafe for him to hang out and some kind of classes—yoga, oenology, cooking, whatever—for me, that’s perfect.

Where in Seattle do you recommend we go?