Alright, I should be back to doing a daily entry while I'm in Portland... it's somewhat hard to do when I go to Jays games because I'm so tired afterwards lol. Day 7b - Seattle for the win! Chihuly Garden and Glass is exquisite - I don't know why I didn't come here last time, it's truly a gem. The way they have it set up and staged is perfect: outdoors in the garden you have the sun helping all the colours in the glass pop and inside all the backgrounds/walls/pedestals are jet black with perfect lighting that creates not only the ideal backdrop for photos, but also provides the most brilliant reflections of the artwork. It's really just amazing that everything is made of this glass. My favourite was probably the boat full of marbles/balls ... read more

(Short and sweet today!) Well, here we go again... I told you, I'll be happy with a 1-5 road trip, but I'm growing doubtful of even that. (Never mind that we don't even have a starter listed for tomorrow, ahem) Anyway, today was pretty much just baseball and relaxing. (Hence only baseball photos) Spent the morning chatting with one of my roomies - she's a teacher from Australia, so we chatted about the similarities and differences. It's her first full year gig this upcoming term, so she's really excited/has like nothing ready so good luck to her. She's tagging along with me to the airport tomorrow (she's flying to LA for a few days before going home). It was a day game today, which was welcome in terms of weather... it was a positively toasty 20 ... read more

Another crazy day... but the travel went a lot better this time at least. I was so tired from the ordeal getting out of LAX to my hostel yesterday that I fell asleep around 8:30pm. That worked in my favour for my early bus out to San Fran lol. So I head off to North Hollywood to catch... sigh... a Greyhound. I know last time I was like NEVER AGAIN, but I guess the caveat is if a bus starts at the given location (like the route started in LA, not some weird line that went like Miami-LA-Seattle or whatever), then I'm ok to take it. The bus ride itself was totally fine and surprisingly uneventful. We drove through a huge chunk of the state that was crazy hazy with the various fires burning - that ... read more

Ok, I'm back in Ottawa for... like 32 hours haha. Sunday I'm heading back out and flying to the west coast, so I'll be back with the blog then. As for the Europe part of the trip with Mom, that sadly came to an end yesterday - it was glorious to wake up in Iceland on my birthday and eat all the skyr I wanted though :) It's been a really great time travelling with Mom - it's bun fun showing her some of my fav spots and discovering some new ones along the way. I'm really lucky that we travel well together (although I'm sure there are some times she could have lived without my desire to walk everywhere haha). Our flight was only around supper, so we had the morning for me to show ... read more

I ran out of free wifi yesterday, so double-up on the blog today - quick entries because nothing that exciting happened either day. I'm basically just biding my time for Iceland lol. Yesterday was the last real cruise day: Copenhagen. I'd say a good 90% of the passengers get on-get off there, so the morning was a little nutty..! Meanwhile we like strut off the gangway like that's right, we'll be back. I strutted off to catch the bus only to have him pretty much close the door on me and drive away haha. My split second indecision of getting on the bus was too long apparently. Once we got into the city, I pretty much just showed Mom around the Old Town area and then we headed up to Nyhavn. We saw the usual in ... read more