Family travel isn’t always easy when you have multiple generations to please, but in Bellevue, you’ll find something for all age groups.

  • credit: Hallie Swanson
  • credit: Homegrown Adventures

Rise and shine with a hearty breakfast of pancakes at Chace’s Pancake Corral, an old-timey spot that serves up the kind of classic flapjacks your grandma made.

Use that food as fuel and let the little ones run and jump around at Funtastic Playtorium in Factoria Square Mall, or take the older ones to scale the climbing and bouldering walls at Stone Gardens (call about options for kids under 14).

  • credit: Stone Gardens
  • credit: Stone Gardens

For a mellower experience, visit Bellevue Arts Museum for Get Crafty Saturdays, a weekly drop-in art activity geared toward kids 4 to 10. While they’re creating mixed-media hot air balloons or printmaking with fruits and vegetables, the adults can take turns walking through the rotating exhibits.

  • credit: Emilie Smith
  • credit: Emilie Smith
  • credit: Matthew Tallorin

Outdoors, there are all kinds of parks in Bellevue, but Kelsey Creek Farm Park packs an extra punch with farm animals—cows, ponies, hogs, ducks, sheep, rabbits, and more—available to visit every day of the year. Elsewhere in the park, there’s a playground, two historic dairy barns,
places to eat a picnic lunch, hiking trails, and a log cabin from the 1880s.

If it’s mid-July to early September, see if the berries are ripe for the picking at Larsen Lake Blueberry Farm. It’s a fun way to keep the kids occupied, and at $1.50 a pound, the price is right.

  • credit: Hallie Swanson
  • credit: Bellevue Parks & Community Services
  • Larsen Lake Blueberry Farm – credit: Jasmine Alley

You can’t come to Bellevue and not do some shopping, and yes, even the little ones can get in on the action. At Bellevue Square, let them loose in the LEGO Store, where there are impressive sculptures made from the iconic blocks, and get them a treat at Lolli & Pops, an inviting shop with candies from around the world and some vintage goodies you’ll remember from your youth.

Snag some new reading material for the hotel or the journey back home at Amazon Books, which curates books into categories like “more than 10,000 reviews,” “most wished for,” and “nonfiction top sellers in Seattle.”

  • credit: Bellevue Collection
  • credit: Jasmine Alley

When it comes time for dinner, Sugar Factory is likely to be a hit. After a meal of burgers and pasta—if you can handle the sugar high—order one of their insane milkshakes, such as their “Giggles Snickers Milkshake.” It comes with cookies & cream ice cream blended with toasted peanuts, topped with a caramel waffle, Snickers, whipped cream and sprinkles served in a chocolate-covered mug with Snickers pieces and rainbow sprinkles.


Article written by Haley Shapley for the 2019-20 Bellevue Visitor’s Guide.