Kevin!

Just bring silver change. The more you put in, the longer you can stay. They have limits of like 2 hours I think, and a quarter goes a pretty long way. I say, $2 in change and you'll be good.
 
The only meters here are downtown. In the neighborhoods surrounding downtown, they have "zoned" parking, which is completely annoying. If you live in the immediate area where you'd use the zoned spots every day, you get a pass to hang in your car and you park as long as you want. Without the pass, they have time limits.

Parking in downtown Seattle during the day is treacherous. They just made a huge section where I used to park into metered spots, when before it was just time limited and you could usually stay a long past the limit and not get in any trouble (an occasional ticket here or there). And now they're going to destroy the huge pay lot by my work to build a 40 story condo/retail office which means WAY more people and WAY less parking spots.

I'm about 4 months away from saying "fuck it" and getting a bus pass. I just hate the idea of being tied to the busses schedule.
 
I'm not sure how common "parking validation" is, but L.A. is the only place I've encountered that so far. Just wanted to walk around an outdoor mall thing & ended up having to buy a pack of gum from one of the stores to have them stamp the parking ticket as validated. Stupid :loco: