Where to stay in Seattle: the best neighbourhoods and hotels

Pike Place Market is Seattle's front room and has been for more than a century. Under the famous neon sign you will find fishmongers throwing salmon over the counter, buckets of tulips and dahlias, craft stalls, tiny bakeries and the original Starbucks, usually with a queue. Stairs and lifts drop down to the waterfront, where the aquarium, the Great Wheel and the ferry terminal line the piers.

Stay here and you can beat the crowds to breakfast. Palihotel, in a century-old building directly opposite the market, is small, stylish and full of character. The State Hotel, steps away, has a rooftop terrace with a view worth the climb. Hotel 1000, on First Avenue, is the luxury choice close to the bay and the Seattle Art Museum, and the Charter is a five-minute walk from both the market and the Westlake shops.

A few blocks uphill from the market, Downtown is Seattle in a suit: office towers, the big department stores around Westlake Center, the 5th Avenue Theatre and the convention centre. It is the most practical base in the city, with the light rail and the monorail to the Space Needle both close at hand and the market a ten-minute stroll downhill. Just remember you will be walking back up.

The Fairmont Olympic is the landmark, a 1920s palace whose lobby alone justifies a visit, freshly restored and with a new flagship restaurant. The Grand Hyatt sits in the heart of the shopping and theatre district. For something with more wit, the Kimpton Hotel Monaco is a playful boutique hotel between the market and Pioneer Square, and Hotel Theodore fills its rooms with art and artefacts celebrating Seattle's inventors.

Belltown runs north from Pike Place Market towards the Space Needle and Seattle Center, and it is where the city goes out. The streets are a mix of old brick and new glass, packed with cocktail bars, sushi counters, music venues and independent boutiques, with the Olympic Sculpture Park opening onto the bay at the far end. It gets loud at weekends, which is either the appeal or the warning.

The Edgewater is the one everyone remembers, built on Pier 67 over the water with views across Elliott Bay to the Olympic Mountains. The Kimpton Palladian, in a 1910 building that began life as lodgings for mariners, is two blocks from the market and big on vintage style. The Sound Hotel is a sleek, modern option close to Amazon's headquarters, and Hotel Ändra has one of the neighbourhood's best-loved restaurants downstairs.

Pioneer Square is where Seattle began, and it looks the part: handsome red-brick and stone buildings, iron pergolas, art galleries, bookshops and bars in old warehouses. Lumen Field and T-Mobile Park sit just to the south, so on match days the whole neighbourhood turns into one long pre-game. King Street Station and the light rail are here too.

The Embassy Suites by the station is a newer all-suite hotel with breakfast included, handy for families and for the stadiums. The Courtyard occupies a fine Beaux Arts building, and the Arctic Club, in the financial district a few blocks north, is a landmark hotel with a past as a gentlemen's club for Klondike gold-rush veterans.

North of Downtown the city loosens its collar. South Lake Union is the tech district, all new towers and lunch spots, ending at a lake where seaplanes take off between the houseboats. Further north, the University District is livelier and cheaper, built around the handsome University of Washington campus and a main street of noodle bars, bookshops and coffee houses.

citizenM in South Lake Union is compact, clever and good value, with a sociable living-room lobby. In the U-District, the Graduate is a ten-minute walk from campus and has a rooftop bar with one of the best views in the city, while the Residence Inn offers suites with breakfast included for longer stays.

Cross the floating bridge over Lake Washington and you reach Bellevue, about nine miles from Downtown Seattle. It is newer, cleaner and quieter than its neighbour: a cluster of glass towers around the Bellevue Square shopping district, with lakeside parks, a botanical garden and the headquarters of half the tech industry nearby. Microsoft's campus is next door in Redmond.

Hotels are modern and upmarket. The InterContinental is the new five-star, set among pedestrian streets modelled on a European city. W Bellevue brings a lake-house look and a nightclub, the Hyatt Regency connects to the shops and restaurants, and the Hilton has a seasonal outdoor pool and a free local shuttle.

Seattle-Tacoma International Airport lies about 20 km south of Downtown, and the strip of hotels around it is the sensible choice for a dawn departure or a late arrival. It is no beauty spot, but the Link light rail runs from the airport into the city centre, so you are not stranded.

The Hilton Seattle Airport sits directly across from the terminal and has far more going on than most airport hotels. The Hampton Inn & Suites on 28th Avenue is close to the light rail for easy trips to Pike Place Market and the stadiums, and the Residence Inn on Angle Lake has a rooftop terrace and a lakeside park a short walk away. Neighbouring Tukwila adds more choice beside the Southcenter mall.

Tacoma, down the Puget Sound from Seattle, has reinvented its old industrial waterfront as a museum district. The Museum of Glass and the Chihuly Bridge of Glass are the stars, a tribute to the city's most famous son, and on a clear day Mount Rainier looms closer here than anywhere in Seattle.

Hotel Murano is the natural base, a boutique hotel in the centre of downtown that doubles as a gallery of glass art, a few blocks from the museum. The Marriott and the Courtyard are both downtown, close to the convention centre and the Tacoma Dome.