9 Cranes Inn

French press demo and tasting at Cafe Vita

We recently took advantage of a rare morning off to check out the Coffee Crawl conducted by Seattle By Foot tours. Offered at the reasonable hour of 10 a.m. (well, Mike has a different opinion on what’s reasonable, but he was a sport), the tour starts at Seattle’s Best Coffee in Pike Place Market.

A surprising number of us were locals, which our guide Anna said was typical for January. I won’t go into detail about what we learned, for that would ruin the tour for you (but you might find a random tidbit on 9 Cranes Inn’s Facebook page). Suffice it to say that you get a little history, some insight into all things coffee, and a fair amount of the beverage in a variety of forms.

You also get a little exercise. I thought that the tour would be limited to the few blocks within Pike Place Market. But no. We even hopped a bus to Pioneer Square and got tips on hidden-gem kind of sights that we never knew existed!

Some tips about the Coffee Crawl:

• If you drive to the meeting place (But why would you? From 9 Cranes Inn you can catch the #5 bus straight to downtown), don’t park in the street, where you can stay for only two hours. The outing takes a full two hours from start to finish, not counting time to gather then disperse. So if you do what I told you not to do, you’ll incur the wrath of your fellow coffee crawlers being delayed by you trying to connect up again.

• The tour doesn’t end where it begins – a good thing if you want to take in additional sights around Pioneer Square and the International District, or simply take a nice stroll back to the Market. It’s less of a good thing if you’re on a tight time frame and you’ve parked all the way back at the Market (see, that driving thing can really be a pain).

• Finally, the last coffee stop on the crawl does have a restroom, which you no doubt will need by then.