Okay so I need to tell you about this trip and I honestly could go on and on but I'm trying not to write a book. I've been a Twilight girl since the very beginning. Like, I READ these books. Stayed up way too late with them. Saw every movie in theaters. And I always said someday I'd go to Forks.
Y'all. I went. And I'm STILL not over it.
This guide is everything I wish I'd had before we left. Every location and every address and what to order and where to stay and what's worth it and what's kind of lame (there's a little bit, haha). I went and stood in these places, I didn't just google it from my couch. So before we get into any of it- a few things you need to know first.
The Dream That Started Everything
Okay this part gets me every time. Stephenie Meyer was a stay at home mom in Phoenix in 2003. No writing career and no big plan and it was just a regular Tuesday, and she woke up from this dream she couldn't shake about a girl and a boy in a meadow and the boy is telling the girl he loves her but he also kind of wants to kill her. Like, a LOT.
She sat down and wrote it.
That scene became Chapter 13. She finished the whole book in three months. Three!! The advance was $750,000 and the series went on to sell over 100 million copies in 37 languages.
All from a dream she almost didn't write down. I think about that literally every time I'm about to talk myself out of an idea (which is a lot, ask Chris).
What Each Book Was Built On
This is my fav Twilight trivia to drop on people because once you know it you can't unknow it. Stephenie Meyer built every single book on a classic. On purpose.
Twilight
Pride and Prejudice. Two people who shouldn't work and they're circling each other and fighting it the whole time. Edward is Darcy. The pride and the restraint and the eventual cave. It's SO obvious once you see it and I can't unsee it now.
New Moon
Romeo and Juliet. The whole Volturi part is basically scene for scene. Edward thinks Bella's dead and races to end it and it's all one big miscommunication that almost costs everything. I'm not crying you're crying.
Eclipse
Wuthering Heights. Jacob is Heathcliff, wild and consuming and he doesn't get picked. Bella stuck between two kinds of love and only one way out. This one hurts the most honestly.
Breaking Dawn
The Merchant of Venice AND A Midsummer Night's Dream, both at once. Contracts and sacrifice and then magic and everyone turning into something more than they were. She went there and I respect it haha.
She also said Orson Scott Card and L.M. Montgomery were big influences. So Anne of GREEN GABLES and Ender's Game. In the same breath. Which makes total sense and I love her for it.
The Two Swan Houses
Okay you need to know this before you plan anything because it confuses literally everyone and it changes your whole trip.
There are two Swan Houses. They're not the same place. They're not even in the same state. And knowing which is which is everything.
Forks, Washington
This is the original. A 1905 farmhouse in the actual town of Forks that Stephenie Meyer used for inspiration when she was writing. Forks officially named it the real Swan House in 2006, which was BEFORE the movies. Before Robert Pattinson was even cast. Before any of it.
It has the sunny yellow kitchen and Bella's room with the purple bedding and the dreamcatcher and it feels like the books, the way you pictured it when you were reading them. It's even in the Official Illustrated Guide.
This is the one we stayed at and the one you can rent on Airbnb. Book it now. I'm serious, close this and go book it and then come back haha.
St. Helens, Oregon
This is the house they filmed in. It's in St. Helens, Oregon, 30 miles north of Portland and over 200 miles from Forks. This is the one Kristen Stewart walked into on screen.
It's an Airbnb now too, with real props and furniture from the movie, and staying there is its own kind of surreal.
Both are incredible. They're just really really different.
So many people show up in Forks looking for the movie house and get so confused when it doesn't look right. Now you won't be one of them.
The Secret Nobody Tells You
Almost nothing in the first Twilight movie was filmed in Forks.
I know. WAIT. I know.
They wanted the Pacific Northwest look, the rain and the moss and the grey and that specific green, but the filming happened all over Oregon and a little bit of southern Washington. St. Helens and Portland and Vernonia and Kalama and Cannon Beach and the Columbia River Gorge.
Forks is a book town. It's where the story lives. You go there to feel what Stephenie Meyer was picturing and walk the streets she wrote about and stand in the rain and get why she picked THIS place. And honestly it delivers.
But the filming stuff- the school parking lot and the Cullen house and the diner and the prom- that's all scattered across Oregon. This guide takes you to every single one of them with addresses.
Before You Book Anything
Book the Swan House. Before flights, before anything else. The house picks your dates and everything else works around it. People book it a YEAR out and I'm not even exaggerating. bellaswanhouse.com or just search Airbnb. Go now.
Best time to go is late spring through early fall, May to September is the sweet spot. And if you can swing late September- the Forever Twilight in Forks festival happens every year and actual cast members show up. Ashley Greene and Jackson Rathbone and Stephenie Meyer herself has been. September 13th is literally Stephenie Meyer Day in Forks. I can't.
Fly into Seattle. Forks is about four hours from there. Most people do a couple days in Seattle first and then head out to the Peninsula. If you wanna do the Oregon filming locations first, fly into Portland and work your way up.
Reserve Bella Italia before you leave home. Not when you get to Port Angeles, before you leave. It's small and it fills up. Dinner only, Tuesday through Sunday. bellaitaliapa.com and I'll wait.
Buy your Olympic National Park pass ahead at recreation.gov. You need it for La Push and a bunch of other stops. Save yourself the line.
The Rewatch Order
Do this before you leave. It makes being there sooo different.
Read or reread Twilight. Even just the Forks chapters. The book gives you the town in a way the movie can't and walking those streets with Bella's voice in your head is a totally different trip than just going in with the movie. Do it the week before.
Watch all five movies in order. Even if you've seen them a hundred times (I have), watch them again right before. Pay attention to where things are and pay attention to the light, that grey green Pacific Northwest light. You'll recognize it the second you get there and it'll stop you cold.
Read Midnight Sun if you haven't. It's Edward's version of the whole first book and it came out in 2020 after getting leaked twelve years before that (there's a WHOLE story, it's in Chapter 10). Standing in these places after reading his side is a whole other thing.
"I'd never given much thought to how I would die. But dying in the place of someone I love seems like a good way to go."
Bella Swan · Twilight