Exploring the jewels of the Emerald City.

• Author: Woodring, Jeannie
• Position: Seattle, Washington

A collection of travel treasures to enjoy on your next trip to Seattle.

Today's fast jetliners and cheap airline tickets make Seattle an attractive destination for winter-weary Alaskans.

And, just as it has for decades, the Emerald City continues to welcome Alaska's travelers with great hospitality and a wealth of memorable events to enjoy.

"Seattle is only three hours away, and it does offer just about everything that everyone wants out of a big city," says Vanessa Lasater, branch manager of USTravel in Anchorage. "And it's fairly reasonable as far as cost is concerned."

Outlined below are just a few of the vacation ideas that make Seattle sparkle like the green jewel it is named after.

FASCINATIONS FOR THE FOOTLOOSE

Located between the historic Pike Place Market and the Kingdome sports complex, Pioneer Square is probably Seattle's most accessible neighborhood -- and most historic one, as well.

In the 1850s, the city's first white settlers began setting up shops in the area. After a fire razed Seattle in June 1889, local businessmen reconstructed the town in a frenzy, erecting dozens of elaborate Victorian Romanesque buildings in a 20-square-block area over a three-year period.

Preserved as a National Historic District in 1970, Pioneer Square now represents the nation's largest concentration of Victorian Romanesque architecture.

Underneath Pioneer Square, you'll find another dimension of local history in tours of "Seattle's Underground." The phenomenon came about after the fire of 1889, when city planners decided to raise all streets the equivalent of a one-story building in order to sufficiently bury new sewer and water lines.

Merchants ignored the request and continued to erect their brick buildings. But city engineers persevered and managed to raise and pave 25 blocks worth of streets a full story above the business district's sidewalks and ground-level store-fronts. Under the raised roads, business continued as usual, creating the country's first underground shopping experience.

The 20th century saw business in the Seattle underground fade away to brothels and bars. The subterranean area officially shut down in 1907. Fortunately, in the 1960s, a group of enterprising Seattlites cleaned up the underground business area and got historic preservation status for the site. As thousands of people clamored to visit the underground district, tours began.

Today, more than 150,000 people annually trek through Seattle's underground, which is open...