Ben and Iains Excellent Adventure

Days 36-42 (by Iain) Since leaving San Francisco over a week ago we have been taking in the states of Oregon and Washington before saying farewell to the USA and entering Canada once again. This reworking of the trip was to solve the problem our our decreasing financial resources, which involved getting an earlier flight back to Scotland than planned but allowed us to take in more than we had originally thought. The whole region of NW America is fantastically set. I thought San Francisco was the best looking city that we had come across but Portland, Seattle and Vancouver are also very nice to look at and wander around. We spent a couple of days in Portland first which was a very small city but what they had was packed in nicely (you could walk ... read more

Well... I had so much fun typing up that post the other day that I'll treat you all to an extra long one today as well. This epic entry will cover a whole 11 days starting in Las Vegas. Happy reading! (Or just ignore the typing and look at the pretty pictures!) Day 25 (28/06/07) The morning after our Grand Canyon adventure we had some breakfast at the hostel and chatted to the Danish couple who were on the tour with us. We discussed Danish and British football and he told us all about his country. We caught the bus later that morning to Las Vegas, Nevada - home of gambling, girls and more gambling. At the station we met Jang-Bok (pronounced "Chang-bok") yet another South Korean. I ended up sitting next to him on the ... read more

Days 25-33 (by Iain) So, in this last week and a wee bit we have been travelling through from Las Vegas in the crazily hot Nevada desert to the pretty breezy hills of San Francisco. Vegas was the middle of last week and is just as crazy and tacky as you hear about all the time. We did a little bit of gambling including pulling those slot machine levers down and trying to win pennies, of which Ben bagged $47 very early on. We also played some blackjack which was great fun. Ben sat down at the table first and suffered the consequences of not knowing the little hand signals. After much studying I took his place and pretended to know exactly what I was doing, and ended up doubling my money, Ben profited too. That ... read more

Hey everyone. Apologies for the gap between the last post and this - the Travel Blog website crashed a few weeks ago and all our posts were lost. Thankfully I managed to restore them so I can carry on boring you all to death for a bit longer. Incase you haven't noticed I've uploaded a few photographs to the site starting with the 'Washington, Philly and New York City (Extended Version)' post. Anyway, here is my extended version of Days 19-24 (wow - that's a long time ago!) Incase you've forgotten where I left off, we just spent the evening listening to rock 'n' roll music on Beale Street in Memphis... I'll try and keep the moaning about walking to a minimum! Day 19 (22/06/07) We began the morning of the 22nd by watching a film ... read more

Days 13-24 (by Iain) It's been extra long since my last post mainly due to the places we've been in having limited access or Ben wanting to stick up his super long report before I do mine. So we left Chicago last Saturday morning and are currently just about to get the bus to Las Vegas. In between it all we have stopped at St. Louis, Memphis, San Antonio and Flagstaff (Grand Canyon). It's been several long bus journeys past countless corn fields and desert landscapes- which both get slightly less exciting by the hour. After Chicago our first stop was St. Louis- a small wee city in Missouri known for it's music, the city itself wasn't to crazy but the suburb we stayed in was fantastic, everyone was friendly and had Scottish grandparents, there were ... read more

Days 7-12 (by Iain) So, here's what we've been up to this week; Last weekend was spent in Niagara which was a fantastic little ghost town on the American side of the border and our hostel was run by a crazy wee Chinese woman who couldn't stop helping us. Through several conversations I think her husband (dead or not: I couldn't figure out) was Scottish. Still, the Falls were pretty cool- there's three of them in total and wee had a good wee walk down beside the Niagara River. Whilst there we also met an English couple who gave us free Spaghetti one night and came drinking with us in Toronto. Which is where we went next. Toronto was okay. I guess we didn't know quite what to do despite a lengthy e-mail from Joe about ... read more

Days 1-6 (by Iain) Hey, so 6 days down and we've managed to get from D.C. to Niagara without any real problems. It's gone pretty quickly so far, not least Washington where we hung about for a whole 7 hours looking for a place to stay, finding nowhere, wandering past the main sights and getting on a train to Philadelphia. We do now realise that booking ahead is probably a good thing to do when your getting into another country at 1 in the morning. As it was we enjoyed the airport seating on our first night, only waking up every 15 minutes or so. We were then overjoyed to be able to get into Washington at 6 in the morning and walk around with heavy backs for about 8 miles, feeling like Mary and Joseph ... read more