Ballard

Start at the Ballard Locks, the busiest in the nation: sailboats and salmon trawlers rising and falling between Puget Sound and the freshwater ship canal while tourists lean over the railings. The fish ladder's underwater viewing windows are the real show — sockeye and chinook muscling upstream all summer, herons and sea lions running interference.

Then it's a flat walk to Ballard Avenue, a National Historic District of 1890s brick that now holds the city's best concentration of bars, restaurants, and shops. Sundays add the year-round farmers market down the middle of the street. The surrounding blocks hide more than a dozen breweries — Reuben's, Stoup, Fair Isle — most of them kid-and-dog-tolerant taprooms a few minutes' walk apart.