Seattle is a city of neighborhoods, and I’m getting to know them. Today we toured the Central District (in hard hats, no less!), then lunched in Capitol Hill. Several mornings I’ve hiked along the waterfront. I also visited Green Lake and Woodland Park. 

But I’ve spent most of my time in Seattle’s first neighborhood, First Hill, also called Pill Hill because of the hospitals here. 

I’ve trudged up steep grades and sidled through shortcuts. I’ve spotted fewer tents under I-5 but heard more sirens heading up to Harborview. 

It’s an urban neighborhood with all that implies, but there’s a gentility beneath the grime. Here are leafy lanes and named apartments buildings, an old German deli on Madison and a cathedral garden behind St. James.

I leave today with the smell of the city in my pores and the pitch of the hills in my calves. And I leave … from First Hill.