This place is amazing, not just for the impressive array of early telephone and communications systems assembled here, but for the fact that a lot of it actually works. The volunteer staff at the Museum of Communications, formerly the Vintage Telephone Equipment Museum, leads tours of the facility and can also be seen restoring and maintaining the equipment.

It may look like a charming rambler, tucked away in a Bellevue neighborhood. But there’s something a little different about this house: the world’s largest online retailer was born here. That’s right: Jeff Bezos founded Amazon.com, originally called Cadabra, in the house’s converted garage while renting it in the mid-1990s.

For many years, Microsoft placed plaques in the sidewalk for nearly every piece of software it developed. Taken as a whole, the hundreds of markers tell the story of the company’s rise to the top of the software industry in the 1980s and 1990s. It features plaques not only for hits (MS-DOS, Windows 95) but also flops (Microsoft Bob).

It’s not exactly the Smithsonian in scale, but the customer service center at the Japanese video-game giant’s North American headquarters features a small museum of classic Nintendo consoles, games and memorabilia.

This swanky office and warehouse felt the tech boom and bust like no other property in the region, as the former home not only of HomeGrocer but also, at different points, of ShareBuilder and Craig McCaw’s Teledesic — which oversaw an upscale remodel of the interior, adding a huge mezzanine space and high-end amenities.

This drive-in fast-food restaurant is a longtime favorite of Bill Gates, and probably your best chance of catching a glimpse of the Microsoft chairman, apart from spotting him and wife Melinda on one of their nights out at the movies in Seattle.

The birthplace of Seattle’s wireless industry, Carillon Point is an office and commercial complex with incredible views across Lake Washington. No wonder Craig McCaw chose it as the headquarters of McCaw Cellular, which later became AT&T Wireless.

The Microsoft chairman’s high-tech Medina mansion, built in the mid-1990s on the shores of Lake Washington, is considered notable enough to have its own Wikipedia page. Unless you have your own boat, or can somehow wrangle a personal invitation from Bill and Melinda, the best way to glimpse the property is on a boat or airplane tour of the Seattle region.

This recently revamped and relocated facility showcases Microsoft products, past and present, and offers a chance to play Xbox 360 games on a giant screen. Across the hall is the company store, also recently relocated, where the public can buy merchandise but not software or hardware, which are sold at an employee discount.

Grab a latte, score a venture capital deal? You might just have that luck if you pop into the Starbucks in Seattle’s tony Madison Park neighborhood. The late Keith Grinstein of Second Avenue Partners hung out there so much that some in the venture community simply called it “Keith’s office.”