5 Tips for Planning a Winter Vacation in Seattle

If you’re planning an upcoming winter vacation and you’ve already been skiing in Colorado or spent Christmastime in New York, how about going to Seattle? Sure, it might not be the first place that comes to people’s mind but thanks to its many museums, its winter train tours, and the Argosy Christmas Ship Festival, it really can be one of the best winter vacations that you’ve ever had.

If this has begun to pique your interest, we’ve enclosed five tips for planning a winter vacation in Seattle below:

Don’t be too concerned about the winter weather. Something that you’ll probably consider to be really great news is the fact that, for the most part, Seattle’s winter weather is actually pretty mild. As a matter of fact, unless you go to the higher elevations in Washington State, you’re not likely to see a lot of snow. However, do keep in mind that November-March is Seattle’s rainy season. This brings us to the second point.

Pack for rainy weather. There’s nothing like planning a vacation and realizing that you didn’t pack any of the things that you actually needed. Being that Seattle tends to see quite a bit of rain during the wintertime, be sure to take a raincoat, some rain boots and definitely an umbrella or two. Also, because the air can be pretty cool and damp, it’s smart to layer your body with some long johns as well.

Look for cheap flights. Depending on where you’re coming from, plane tickets to Seattle can be pretty pricey; especially if you wait until the last minute (less than 30 days) to book your flight. Our recommendation is to look on Southwest first. They tend to have some great deals.

Book your hotel reservations before time. Once you arrive in Seattle, you ideally want to already have your hotel reservations in place. The nice thing is that there are plenty of upscale hotels in Seattle at some really great prices. Some of them include the Ace Hotel, the Grand Hyatt, the Fairmont Olympic Hotel and the Pan Pacific. Due to the potentially rainy conditions, our recommendation is that you factor in some of the tourist sites that you want to see and then stay in a hotel that is less than a 20-minute drive to most of them.

Do some research on what’s open year round. There are a lot of cities that have plenty of tourist attractions; unfortunately some of them have seasonal openings. Being that you are going to Seattle in the winter, it’s a good idea to first go online to see what kind of sites are available to you during that time of year. Luckily, there are actually quite a few of them. Sure there are some exclusive fun summertime Seattle activities there but one website that can give you quite a bit of information about what you can do any time of the year is Clipper Vacations. Just go to the site and put “50 Things to Do in Seattle” in the search field. Enjoy your vacation!