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Exploring Seattle in 72 hours

Traveling with a travel influencer

By Luke Beard

April 9^th, 2020

Pre-Pandemic Story

This story was published before the COVID-19 pandemic of 2020. While travel is cool and Seattle is awesome please don't travel if you don't have to. We have to slow that spread for the sake of everyone.

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Be cool folks.

I met Klaudia (aka @thetravelcritic) when I first moved to Atlanta. We had connected over Instagram and her approach to being a travel influencer had always been interesting to me.

She has a very thoughtful and authentic approach to storytelling in a way that I think is quite unique. After moving back home to Detroit this past year but we stayed in touch over Instagram and I was stoked to see had become one of the first Delta Ambassadors, a new program that Delta set up to work with travel influencers and tell stories about the destinations they fly to.

The influencer economy has always been fascinating to me and I'm in part...kind of in it. I've worked with a fair few brands in the past 3-4 years but what Klauida does is much more mature than the typical smaller partnerships I do. We had chatted a few times about letting me tag along to play photographer for any trips she had planned. Then the question arrived.

Any chance you want to come to Seattle?

Thankfully that chance came up in September with a trip to one of my favorite cities, Seattle. I've spent a fair amount of time there since living in America but not much in the past 3 years (fun fact we almost moved there before deciding on Atlanta).

The plan was pretty simple, follow Klauida around for 3 days and shoot content. Very much my jam! Below are some of my favorites from the trip. She has just started sharing her story on Instagram so I highly suggest following along.

Palihotel Seattle

We stayed in the realtively new contemporary boutique Pali located directly across the street from the famed Pike Place Market and the Elliott Bay Waterfront. Really quite lovely if you need stay that is about as central as it gets.

City Roaming

Seattle has some really great biking infrastructure so it was great to hop on Jump eBikes (huge fan) to get around the city. I'm a big advocate for mobility and transit so having these kind of options is always a huge plus. Pair than with the fantastic train/literail system and I think we took 1 Uber in total.

Thanks to Justin Danks I got take a stroll around Airbnb's new office. A beautiful brand new renovation for their growing presence in Seattle. They are hiring!

The monorail has to be one the most whimsical and fun ways to move around any city.

I'm a huge sucker for Oddfellows, I ate my weight in hash and was 100% ok with it.

Pike Place Market

A classic stop I had really never spent any time at. We bought flowers, we took photos and had a great time people watching all the tourist.

Cafe Flora was delicious and part of a big theme of the trip that was to seek out local business that were focusing on sustainable produce.

"Since opening its doors, Cafe Flora has been at the forefront of utilizing local, organic and sustainable produce and building strong, direct relationships with Washington farms. Its culinary team draws inspiration from international traditions and the availability of abundant, locally grown produce to create imaginative and dynamic vegetarian, vegan, and gluten-free cuisine." - cafeflora.com

Moody car interlude.

We finished the trip off with a drink at The Nest. A rooftop bar right on the water that has always been a stellar place to catch a sunset and that we did.

This whole trip was different for me as a photographer as typically I'm not shooting this much of one person. Klaudia happens to be a pro so it was a ton of fun to get the hero shots and the types of photos she can share her story with.