For many Americans, Seattle may be synonymous with Starbucks, Boeing, Microsoft and Amazon. But after my first visit to this pristine, panoramic site, I will always think of it fondly as America’s Amazing Self-Cleaning City.

Seriously, by the end of my Alaska Airlines flight home from SEA to IAH, the trash from the meal had vanished so completely from the cabin, I was sure the Seattle folk among us had conscientiously crumpled up and ingested whatever leftover debris they might have found in the wake of the flight attendants.

It's actually not the only complimentary title I’ve admiringly bestowed upon this beautiful city. But let me begin at the beginning of my infatuation with scenic Seattle over a recent long-weekend trip.

It was love at first sight from the moment my Continental Airlines flight from Houston landed at Seattle-Tacoma International Airport ("SeaTac"), where, from my window seat, I was dazzled to behold a distant black-and-white image of either Che Guevara or Jimi Hendrix gracing the tails of a rack of parked Alaska Airlines planes, which I’d never seen before.

What a city! I marveled. What kind of wild, independent, best-of-Baby Boomer spirit must have spawned the idea of putting a sketch of the adventurous author of The Motorcycle Diaries or the legendary electric guitar rocker on the tails of planes belonging to a Seattle-based fleet!

I didn't find out until later that the black-and-white sketch I saw from afar actually represented a benignly smiling Eskimo's face inside a furry hood. The wreath of radiating fur threw me off. I initially took it to be the long hair of one of a number of revolutionaries and/or rockers whose profiles decorated many a T-shirt years ago. (For example, I once won a tennis match wearing, over my club-code white tennis skirt, a courage-bolstering black T-shirt sporting the profile of Malcolm X and the quote, "By Any Means Necessary.") I guess I was so ready to like Seattle, I was projecting some happy memories onto it.

Interestingly, during the flight, I had been reading a charming little book called The Art of Travel  by my favorite living writer (other than myself, of course), Alain de Botton, who eloquently explains why I was doing what I was doing. De Botton demonstrates, through clever vignettes, how people who travel (including the likes of Baudelaire and Flaubert) introduce their histories, their notions, and ultimately, their present-day realities, into every site they visit, no matter how far away or exotic.

I like the smiling Eskimo face even more, now that I’ve seen the sketch up close and finally get the picture, so to speak. This fellow looks as if he knows how to find the fun in life, including super-cool places to visit. Who knows, maybe when they took his picture for the airplane sketch, he was amused to hear somebody say it was so clear up in his part of the country, folks could see all the way to Russia.

  Indeed, this was a perfectly gorgeous, crystal-clear, sky-blue, picture-postcard day. The air was so clear in Seattle that day — the first of four cool, sunny days — you really could see for miles, although I don't think I ever caught a glimpse of Moscow.

Consider the contrast. I had just left the drought-worn, jaundiced, broiling-hot, ozone-overloaded, upper-90s, newer-than-new, supersized metropolis of Houston, where the equatorial sun never stops shining 24 hours a day, for a softly sunlit, historic, resort-like coastal city washed by brisk breezes sweeping through from sailboat-sprinkled Puget Sound. It was so clear, I felt as if I had suddenly regained miles of eyesight I thought I’d lost somewhere in the ozone back home in Texas.

And what was that strange, sweet scent? Could it be the thing they call. . . “fresh air?” I gulped in extra aboard a pretty white Washington State ferry bound for Bainbridge Island, trying to store up good oxygen in my lungs to guard against future onslaughts of suboptimal inhalations elsewhere.

It was heavenly to stand at the prow of the vessel gliding smoothly over the sunlit water, feeling the rush of cold sea winds as we picked up speed. The perfect weather gave passengers a stunning view of the impressive downtown skyline as we left land, heading out to sea among scores of sailboats moving as gracefully as swans. I thought of Fauvist painter Raoul Dufy’s bright, colorful regatta paintings as I admired the endless azure sky melting into lapis lazuli-tinted water. Throughout my stay in the Emerald City, I was always looking at brilliant blue and green colors any artist would love to paint: the beautiful blue of Puget Sound and Lake Washington, and the lush, verdant, ubiquitous evergreen trees.

Another excursion took me to the popular Ballard Fish Ladder, where fish make the transition from salty Puget Sound through the Hiram M. Chittenden Locks at Salmon Bay to the fresh water of the Ship Canal. I was further enamored by the nearby Golden Gardens Park, which encompasses wetlands, picnic areas, hiking trails and an immaculate beach with an incredible view. I saw an adorable family of ducks, and was astounded to note that even they didn’t dare leave so much as a mark on the pristine landscape.

Seattle was a kaleidoscopic, multisensory experience — a feast for the stomach as well as the eyes. I thoroughly enjoyed both the atmosphere and the cardamom bread I tried at Larsen’s Original Danish Bakery, which is famous for its Kransekage, a festive, multi-tiered tower of an almond-paste cake served at Scandinavian weddings and other celebrations. And I ate the most delicious wild salmon at the waterside restaurant, Chinook’s, in Fisherman’s Terminal as I gazed at all the fishing boats outside the picture windows.

Regardless of your taste in food, it’s great fun to visit the famous Pike Place Fish Market and watch the fishmongers call out and toss fish to one another as they work hard to satisfy the discerning palates of their customers. While you’re there, you’ll want to stroll the whole Pike Place Market, as I did, to enjoy the vista of a wealth of fresh everything, including a broad array of attractively arranged fruit and vegetables from neighboring farms and big bunches of colorful flowers. The old, restored Sanitary Market Building and Corner Market Building were utterly charming, in and of themselves.

Much to the appreciation of its many tourists, Seattle has an admirable penchant for preserving the architectural beauty embodying the visual historical lessons of its past, blending the old with an abundance of ultra-new structural designs. There are so many beautifully designed and constructed buildings dating back to the early 1900s whose exteriors are such architectural works of art, one wants to stand and stare at them for hours.

Two buildings that I particularly liked were the city’s two grand old rail stations: the 1911 Union Station, with its splendid Great Hall, which is often the site of weddings, and the still-functioning, red brick and granite King Street Station, which dates back to 1906.

I loved taking a trip into the past in the King Street Station, the already beautifully spiffed-up subject of an extensive restoration program, including sustainable design elements. Cross the threshold, and you feel you’re stepping onto the set of a classic old film in the pivotal, dramatic rail station farewell scene. I contemplated future adventures pictured in black-and-yellow Amtrak brochures describing the wondrous scenes one could view from the big windows of the trains chugging along the routes taken by the “Empire Builder” or the “Coast Starlight.”

During a walk downtown, I came across another fine-looking old building: a big, white, elegant structure on the corner of Fifth Avenue at Pike Street. I craned my neck to admire every bit of its ornately decorated, old-world terra cotta exterior, which was engraved on one side with the word “COLISEUM,” although the modern sign on the front proclaimed “Banana Republic.” Intrigued, I entered the clothing store to discover that it occupied a restored building which originally housed a movie theater. Later, I found that what I had stumbled across was one of the world’s first “movie palaces,” which had opened in 1916. Talk about curb appeal! Very ingenious, Banana Republic!

Like Houston, Seattle has plenty of ultramodern buildings downtown, as well. I loved the innovative architectural style of the glass-and-steel Central Library, designed by Rem Koolhaus and Joshua Prince-Ramos. It looked to me as if this big, muscular building, which opened in 2004, was trying to punch its way out of its glass wrapping, or was flexing its many giant elbows to get more room. Any way I looked at it, I liked it, especially the way it was designed to be sustainable over the long term. Not just flash, but thoughtful, intelligent planning – that’s what I like to see in architectural design.

The Westin Seattle Hotel, where I stayed, is also quite contemporary in design, inside and outside. I had gotten a great three-nights-for-two weekend deal on an amazing room high up in one of the hotel’s two huge towers. My room was so glamorous that when I walked in and saw the curtains framing a panoramic window view overlooking the Space Needle, Puget Sound and the surrounding mountains, I felt I’d walked in on the opening act of a grand opera.

Every time I returned to my room, I gave the view a silent standing ovation as I smiled and took it all in, thinking how lucky I was to be alive to see all this beauty from the ground (and water) up in this singularly well-thought-out city. I could literally see that Seattleites pay considerable attention to, and seem to really care about, what goes on and into their city, reflecting the focus they put on their own long-term health and welfare. There’s a definite emphasis on optimal nutrition and fitness, given the heavy patronage of the freshest, organic, locally grown food at the farmers markets and restaurants, and the abundance of runners and bicyclists, even on the steepest of the city’s seven hills.

In addition to my positive impressions of Seattle from an intellectual perspective, I was surprised to feel an emotional resonance. I felt completely at home in what I found to be an old neighborhood city. I was fascinated to discover that the city of Seattle has a Department of Neighborhoods, which encourages its citizens to get involved in their communities. Great idea!

I loved seeing the differences among neighborhoods, how they displayed their distinct characters and personalities through their homes and choices of greenery and landmarks. As I’ve been working for decades in higher education, I guess it was natural that I immediately felt comfortable in the University District, which is the serenely attractive area around the beautiful new and old buildings comprising the high-ranking University of Washington (locally, “the U Dub.”)

Then there was avant-garde Fremont, which gave me any number of chuckles seeing the enormous troll statue hiding under the Aurora Bridge, the imposing statue of Lenin, and the amusingly dressed outdoor sculpture, “Waiting for the Interurban.”

Speaking of public art, there’s plenty of it in Seattle, like the big, mechanical “Hammering Man” outside the Seattle Art Museum.

There’s lots more in Seattle to please any visitor’s palate, as can be seen on the helpful Seattle Convention and Visitors Bureau website, which imaginatively describes the city as metronatural. That appropriately signifies that Seattle has a two-sided appeal, as a sophisticated metropolis surrounded by an abundance of natural beauty. Another great online city guide is Lonely Planet’s list of “things to do in Seattle.”

But the best guides of all during my own visit were my sister and brother-in-law. They greeted me at the airport and graciously insisted on driving me all over town so I could see and enjoy everything they liked about Seattle, which gave me not just a surface view of the city, but an in-depth look at its vibrant lifestyle. They somehow managed to squeeze all that activity into less than four days, from the time I arrived on a Thursday afternoon to the moment I left my hotel Sunday morning.

It is possible that my rhapsodic review of Seattle was influenced by the fact that my family reunion recreated a little of our own old neighborhood. Then again, maybe that history helped me better understand what I was looking at in Seattle, to see it in context. I keep wondering what my fellow travel enthusiast, de Botton, would say. Either way, I’m pretty sure he would approve.