I was in Seattle for a year or so, and lived in three places-- Redmond, Kirkland and Belltown, which was just up from first street downtown, although I visited a lot of other areas including queen anne, the university district and others. I'd recommend the book "Seattle Survival Guide, 3rd edition" by Theresa Morrow--- this helped me find the neighborhood that I was looking for. The key thing is to figure out which side of the water you want to live on, because although everything is just 10 miles or so--- if you have to cross water, for some reason you just don't do it.