The bluest skies I’ve ever seen are in Seattle…

Perry Como had a big hit with his theme song for television’s Here Come the Brides back in the 60s, but the song proved more accurate than most folks elsewhere once thought. There has always been a clear vision here in this often-cloudy urban paradise set in a rolling valley between snow-capped mountains and sometimes not-so-blue waters.

This vision reaches high above the clouds into sun-soaked wing flaps that simply say Boeing. It also reaches deep into cyberspace to the “ones and zeroes” that create the Microsoft Windows operating system. When you speak to any Seattle Realtor, you might want to speak in the language of coffee — perhaps you’d like your Seattle Real Estate Grandé, your neighborhood extra creamy, with sprinkles of profitable investment.

Seattle is an entrepreneurial capital with the accent on “natural”. Well, almost natural. The uniquely structured Experience Music Project, the personal homage of Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen to rock and roll, has been called many things, but rarely “natural”.

Seattle’s first European settlers arrived in 1851, at a place off Elliot Bay they called “Alki”. They came for the lumber and stayed to create a progressive atmosphere that hasn’t changed more than a century later. “Alki” is a Chinook word for “eventually”, another word that would soon become a synonym for “process” if you believe local observers of government operations. “Eventually” is also used by local professional sports fans to describe the fortunes of local franchises.

Yes, the “Seattle Way” sometimes has mixed results. “Dot coms” are born here and sometimes they end up on the “com”-post of Puget Sound history. Retailers have large shoes to fill in customer service in this birthplace of “Nordstrom”. Everything that can be recycled is reborn in twenty-first century high definition — the concrete, functionary Kingdome becomes a pair of professional sports palaces fit for Architectural Digest, the once-towering, pencil-shaped Smith Tower is stripped of its landmark offices and becomes a high-priced downtown condo for the historically sensitive.

Seattle is a city of hills, lakes and neighborhoods. Even downtown is a roller coaster ride that gave America its first “skid road”. The timber mills at the close of the 19th century carried skids of lumber from the hilltops to waiting boats in Elliot Bay. The timber mills are gone now, but on a rare snow-covered day in Seattle’s winter, the steep drops can cause skids of a different kind. Some city hilltops, such as Queen Anne, provide stunning views at an elevation of more than 1,000 feet. Others, like Denny Hill, got in the way of progress, and were lowered to a more convenient height in the early 20th century.

Lake Washington forms a natural boundary (not to mention a traffic problem) between the city and its East Side suburbs. Greenlake on the City’s North side, has traffic problems of its own on a warm summer day. Runners and walkers often compete side-by-side with traffic on non-motorized wheels. If you’re looking for a place “somewhere over the rainbow”, Capitol Hill may be your neighborhood. If you love New York and Greenwich Village, you’ll have a taste for Capitol Hill.

Even the city’s emerging neighborhoods — such as Beacon Hill and Columbia City to the South — have panoramic hillside views, urbane shopping districts and places to go bump and grind into the night.

Seattle remains a city that is young at heart, from Belltown to the newly remodeled Northgate (the nation’s oldest indoor shopping center). Even for the very young, there is a unique welcome to a city that offers Children’s Theater and museums — as well as the Pacific Science Center — in the massive park that was once the 1962 Century 21 Exhibition. The city’s public schools offer all the diversity of a typical urban school district, and the city’s private schools offer all the ones and zeroes it took for someone to grow up and become Bill Gates.