<p>Is the area immediately surrounding the Univ of Washington campus exciting (restaurants, stores, activities), or does a person have to take a bus to downtown Seattle to find this?</p>
<p>There aare a ton of student oriented places along and off the Ave and also in the U Village shopping center. You can walk to all of it. U Village has a number of higher end stores plus The Gap, Eddie Bauer, Renovation Hardware and the like. Also some good restaurants.</p>
<p>I just visited this last week and honestly wasn’t all that impressed. The village sucked imo and had nothing relatively interesting in there to do besides shop. The ave was okay, but while I appreciate urban, two or three Thai restaurants per block is pretty lame. Seattle isn’t too far and there’s obviously plenty to do there, but you would need a car I guess. If it were me I’d just sit by the cherry blossoms while they’re out :)</p>
<p>in response to cryto, even if the ave doesn’t float your boat, it is really easy to hop on a bus to get to downtown, no car required. students get bus passes that allow unlimited travel im pretty sure. however, most students find the Ave and UVillage plenty to keep them entertained in addition to the on campus happenings</p>
<p>I’m a student right now, and there is sooo much to do in the immediate area - the ave is packed, there are always comedy shows and plays, you can walk to a couple of clubs, ballard, capital hill… soooo much to do. the bus is good though to get downtown or to surrounding areas, but there is seriously a ton to do i’ve gone 2-3 weeks without geting on the bus and not even noticed</p>
<p>in response to cryto… i live 5 mins from U village and 6-7 from UW’s main entrance, in the 14 years I have lived in seattle, i am not even close to having explored all of the ave and Uvillage while expensive is really nice. And you can hop on the Metro 25 to take you right downtown from campus.</p>
<p>The Ave remains dicey.</p>
<p>[Man</a> shot on University Way - The Daily of the University of Washington](<a href=“http://dailyuw.com/2009/4/20/man-shot-university-way-students-raise-concerns-ab/]Man”>http://dailyuw.com/2009/4/20/man-shot-university-way-students-raise-concerns-ab/)</p>