Vacation on transit!

ERIKA SCHULTZ / THE SEATTLE TIMES. Metro service from downtown Seattle to West Seattle offers views of the skyline.

(You can do this in many places, including DC, although it might take awhile to get around.)

From "A mini vacation on Metro Transit," in the Seattle Times:

Riding Metro's Route 255 from Kirkland, I'd begun my "travel-by-bus vacation," an experiment inspired by Rick Steves, Edmonds' budget-travel guru, whose guidebooks extol using public transportation in European cities to save money, see the sights and meet locals along the way. It works there; it could work here.

After one trip, I was hooked. The journeys were as interesting as the destinations. Routes wound through neighborhoods I'd have never found on my own. It was continuous sightseeing.

Even paying full adult fare, the trips were incredibly cheap. I paid more for a double-tall latte at Snoqualmie Falls than I did for the round-trip fare to get there from my hometown of Kirkland. And not a single stop for $3.75-a-gallon gas.

Aiming for interesting destinations reached via regularly scheduled transit routes, here's where I went on my four-day Metro Transit holiday...

I will say that traveling to Seattle last year, and taking the bus from the Airport made me appreciate having rail transit options from the airport, like DC does from National Airport.

ERIKA SCHULTZ / THE SEATTLE TIMES. Bus vacationers can get to Alki Beach on Route 56. Then Route 773 shuttles riders up and down Alki Avenue, with views of Seattle's skyline.