While New York, Las Vegas, Los Angeles, Chicago and San Francisco usually top the lists of American cities to visit, Seattle rarely makes the cut. However this booming modern city is a great place to visit, whether for its sights, proximity to nature or the excellent food and wine.

Truly a city of neighborhoods, Seattle is bifurcated by a highway and generally surrounded by water. The highway’s intrusion is thankfully not too disruptive as it did not run directly through downtown. Instead, it actually managed to create a compartmentalized and walkable city center that you will never find choked with traffic. The main downtown thoroughfare cutting east-west is Pine Street, lined with shopping centers and department stores including Seattle’s own Nordstrom. From the Westlake shopping center (400 Pine Street), you can hop on the monorail and arrive at the Seattle Center, home of the Space Needle, Pacific Science Center and Experience Music Project. The Seattle Center was first built for the 1962 World’s Fair, and while it suffers from an excess of concrete, it’s a great destination for visitors of all ages.

At the western extremity of Pine Street is the famous Pike Place Market. Part tourist attraction and part functioning market, Pike Place is worth a visit if only to watch fishmongers toss fish back and forth. Fresh produce and meats are available as are multiple restaurants, bakeries and the usual tourist souvenir shops. Across from the market, the side alleys up the hill host several dozen little shops selling everything from trinkets to local wines.

A surprising part of Seattle’s recent reinvention has been the surge in world-renowned architecture. The dazzling Seattle Public Library, designed by Dutch architect Rem Koolhaas, is the city’s newest icon. The Experience Music Project, which opened in 2000, was one of architect Frank Gehry’s more controversial works. However, the iconic blob-like buildings have proven to be an innovative home for the music museum, which features everything from interactive exhibits to a history of the Northwest music scene. In an adjoining building you’ll find the kitschy-cool Science Fiction Museum, home to all kinds of sci-fi memorabilia from comic books to TV and movie artifacts. One ticket gets you access to both museums.

Of course, no visit to Seattle is complete without a trip to the top of the Space Needle. On a clear day, the view is spectacular. Be warned that admission is not cheap and the crowds can make for long lines so buy tickets online if you are going at peak times (weekends and prior to sunset).

Back downtown, the area of Pioneer Square is the historic heart of the city with its first skyscraper, Smith Tower. The famous Underground Tour is an ideal, if slightly kitschy, way to learn the history of the city. It starts out in the backroom of a saloon where a guide gives you a tragicomic overview of the founding of the city. Then the tour winds its way through and finally beneath the area’s streets. Since the area was originally a swamp, the buildings and streets were eventually built over. Underground you will find parts of the original city still intact and gain insight to how a frontier town built on equal parts timber and greed came to be. At tour’s end, you will leave shaking your head in disbelief at how one city can survive such mindboggling levels of corruption and incompetence.

The rest of Pioneer Square is full of galleries and shops, including the famous Elliott Bay Book Company. One of America’s great bookstores, the space sprawls across several floors and is a must for book lovers. Just beyond are the twin baseball and football stadiums, home to the Mariners and Seahawks respectively, that push the immediate area into traffic chaos on game day. The International District is chockablock with Chinese and Asian restaurants, and it has a giant Uwajimaya store for Asian groceries and gifts.

With a car, areas like Queen Anne, which overlook the city and provide spectacular views of downtown, and Capitol Hill become accessible. Both areas are full of funky shops, cafes and restaurants. Belltown, just north of downtown has come a long way from its scruffy past but can be plagued with drugged out homeless beneath the monorail tracks.