Seattle First Impressions (I'm 24 just fyi)

[pw72]

Nice thread. A good personal experience that you shared.

Get through this first winter and you will be hooked.

Vancouver does seem huge in some ways because of all the downtown residential. Seattle has much more office/business downtown. Although Seattle is slowly catching up. When South Lake Union is built out, I think the two cities will offer similar density. Vancouver has a smaller metro population than Seattle/Tacoma, btw.

[marionberry]

Originally Posted by PS90

Thanks for the informative, well-written post.

It's funny to hear someone talk about Seattle's traffic being "less". ..

I agree. I've lived in Seattle over 10 years and never got used to the traffic. I hated it. Although I have no doubt there are many places in the US with worse traffic in Seattle... Seattle traffic is just too much for me.

One of the major reasons I just moved out of state this week.

[hubey21]

Originally Posted by mkarch

I'd like to know how to get 40 miles out of DC and still be in fairfax county.

40 miles is the long route. Maybe the amount of time spent in traffic trying to get to D.C. makes it feel almost twice the distance that it is. Technically, according to google maps, I was 25 miles outside D.C. but with the traffic you'd never guess it was that close.

[hubey21]

It's been roughly six months and I'm on my lunch break at my job so I'll update everyone who has been following.

I've moved out of the U-District (North Seattle) to Kirkland ("The Eastside") across lake washington.. I live in a studio apartment which I believe was listed at 571 sq ft. For one person, it's huge. For 2 people and a dog, it's a wait and see thing. My gf came to visit and get things set up while I was at work and we've used up 90% of the storage area we have within in the apartment and she still has stuff to bring when we do the cross country trip. Our apartment does offer additional storage for 25 dollars or something. Our laundry is in-unit which is great because I live on the 4th floor. I don't have much of a view because I'm in the back of the building, but lake washington is a 10 minute walk away. This past Saturday I ran/walked to Juanita Bay Park. It's in restoration, to say the least and since it's winter everything is still dead but hopefully it'll be prettier in 3 months. Juanita bay park is 2.3 miles away from where I live.

I take the bus from the kirkland transit center to the bellevue transit center to get to work and the trip can range from 15-30 minutes depending on traffic and time of day. There's a QFC (grocery) that i can see from the front door of my building so it's easy access but their prices are kind of insane. I spent a good amount of money over a couple weeks not really buying much, so I switched to safeway which I can't walk to but it's only a mile away and the prices are much more reasonable. If you have to have super high quality food then QFC is what you want because theirs is very good and very fresh.

There's a car wash not 1000 feet from my building that's pretty decent and very thorough. You get a hand wash and dry and a machine wash and dry for 13 which is much better than i've seen in my 7 years of owning a car.

First utility bills (water, sewer, trash, electricity) totaled 50. 10 dollars for water/sewer/trash and 30 for electricity. I am very diligent about turning off my power strip and making sure the heat is not on when i leave my house though. I'd say if you're not very tolerant to being cold you could end up with an electric bill close to 60 if your heat is on regularly at about 73 degrees. My heat won't even turn on unless it's set over 72.

There are some decent places to eat in downtown kirkland. The Lodge and Wing Dome are the two I've been to the most. There's a small bar i went to to watch hockey but i don't recall the name. since it was a weekday it was just the bartender and the cook that were there. i was the only one there watching hockey and the bartender had a lakers game on every other tv (why, i don't know).

One thing that's been kind of disappointing is the lack of hookah lounges which all seem to be concentrated in Seattle. There was one a few blocks from my old house, a lot of them in downtown seattle and then google maps lists tacoma which i have no interest in going to except maybe for the car museum.

I went to woodland park zoo with my gf before i moved and the coolest thing about that zoo is that you get to feed penguins. She also told me about a zoo in tacoma that has polar bears and beluga whales which i'm sure we'll be going to when she moves.

As far as the weather, I never felt like it was bothering me. I always had something to do inside if i couldn't go outside and lately the weather has held pretty steady at 50 and this week is supposed to get close to 70 on Saturday. In contrast back in d.c., it's snowing and raining so Seattle wins the weather battle for me. It was flurrying last friday for about 45 minutes but it was most likely just snow that was blown off the mountains.

Hope this post has been as helpful as the others. Good luck to those still looking to move here.

[indieco]

Thanks for the info. I'm 18 and live in northern Virginia, like you did, and I'm looking to make the move to either Portland or Seattle. How hard was it to find a job? How long exactly did it take? Would you recommend the move?

Thanks.

[mkarch]

Congrats. I think you'll find the Eastside a lot more like Northern Virginia than Seattle is. Virtually nothing there reminded me of Seattle places or people. When I describe NoVa to people that haven't been there, I say it's like a larger, wealthier version of Bellevue that stretches on for miles.