Eastlake ROCKS...I used to live there. It is a quiet, friendly neighborhood, there is a small market on the corner of Lynn and Fairview (you wouldn t want to shop there for all your groceries, but it s good if you just run out of cereal or bread or something), the bus runs through every 15 minutes (north to UW and south to downtown) and if you re lucky you ll have a view of the lake. Restaurants are great (go to the 14 Carrot Cafe for breakfast, or the Zoo Tavern for drinks) and it s a beautiful place to live. One day a year - July 4th - it becomes PARTY CENTRAL because the greatest fireworks show you will ever see in your life takes place over Lake Union and everyone descends on the neighborhood. The other 364 days a year it is quiet and nice. I would highly recommend it to anyone...the only reason I left is because I bought a house (I was renting there) and couldn t afford to buy in the neighborhood.
Eastlake is a great place. There are parts that I would not live in just because of the traffic but there are definately parts that are great. Some sketchy old apts and some really nice places. I know of a few good restaurants in the area. I think it is fairly quiet. It is a bit of a trek to get to depending on what part of Eastlake you are at but in terms of Seattle it is central. There aren t really any huge grocery stores or anything so you would have to drive a ways to get anywhere but accessiblility to Captiol Hill is okay, U District pretty good and downtown pretty good again depending on your exact location. I guess I don t see too many young families in the neighborhood. There is a good elementary school in the area part of Seattle School District.