Advertisement
Published: June 30th 2009
Edit Blog Post
My first experience in the USA was the border crossing at Blaine, WA. After giving digital images of all my fingerprints and having my photo taken (it felt like all that was missing was the board with the numbers on it!) and being quizzed, they let me in, and then charged me $6 for the pleasure. When they were scanning my luggage, they thought I had some gingerbread men in my bag; I couldn’t work out what it was they were talking about, and they didn’t press it. Later on I remembered I had bought an Inukshuk in Canada, which maybe could look like a gingerbread man on their scanners. Back on the bus, and we continued our journey south to Seattle, arriving later on that evening.
Seattle seems like a nice city; I only had 2 full days here, so probably didn’t see all it had to offer, and certainly didn’t manage to get out into the surrounding area. Maybe I’ll come back here some day. I’m think that the list of places I’ve said I’ll maybe come back to some day is getting to be quite long!
Anyway, back to Seattle. Seattle is known as the Emerald
City and it’s football team is the Mariners. I spent a day wandering around Pike Place Market and the surrounding area - I’ve forgotten now how many acres they say the market covers, but it’s huge, and it’s a rabbit warren, but it was quite nice wandering around and checking out all the local arts and crafts, and all the fruit stalls, and the fishmongers. My shopping habit has returned, and having realised that now that I’ve only got 1 transatlantic flight left, I don’t need to worry about minimal baggage allowances that I had on some of my internal flights, and can check in 2 bags on my flight home, so I had room to buy a few other bits and pieces.
In the 1960s, Seattle hosted a World Fair, and part of that was the construction of the Space Needle and Seattle Center. I took the lift up to the observation deck on the Space Needle and got some really great views of the city below.
After my very brief trip to Seattle, on Saturday morning I headed to the train station to catch the Amtrak ‘Coast Starlight’ train from Seattle to Los Angeles. The journey
to LA is 1,377 miles long and takes 35 hours. It’s a nice journey, all down the west coast of the USA, passing through Washington state, Oregon and California.
It’s now Sunday afternoon, and I am sitting in my ‘Superliner Roomette’, which is a little cabin for 2 by day, and then turns into a sleeper berth at night. The 2 seats for a bottom bunk, then there’s a top bunk that comes down from the ceiling. It’s so comfy - I had a good nights sleep last night - I didn’t even have to make the bed myself, the attendant does it, then puts it away while you’re at breakfast. Speaking of food: I’ve been quite well fed since stepping on the train - it’s all included in the sleeper car ticket. On arrival the attendant handed out little bottles of chanpagne and some fruit; then the dining car man came around so that we could select when we wanted to go for lunch. I was pretty full after lunch, and then not long after that he came around again to sort out times for tea! And then the same again today. The food is actually very nice,
and there’s so much of it! I was so full after my tea last night that I couldn’t fit in any pudding, but when I told thhhe waitres this she couldn’t believe it - she twisted my arm to take some chocolate brownie back to my berth for a treat later on. She was right though, I did manage to fit it in later on as a supper time treat.
Yesterday the train travelled through the rest of Washington state, and in the afternoon we crossed the Columbia river and entered the state of Oregon, which is very pretty. We had a longer stop at Portland, OR where we could get off and stretch our legs. When I woke up this morning we were in Sacramento, CA, we passed the San Andreas fault line which is responsible for the earthquakes in the region; we’ve passed San Jose; we’ve just gone through Santa Margarita, and we are just about to cross the Santa Lucia mountains; later on we’ll go through Santa Barbara and a couple of other stops before arriving in LA around 9pm. Earlier on, we passed through a town which is the world’s garlic capital, where you can
buy garlic wine and garlic ice cream, and then we passed through another town which is the world’s artichoke capital, and each year during the artichoke festival, they crown the artichoke queen. One year sometime in the 1940s I think they said, the artichoke queen was none other than Norma Ray Jean (ie Marlyn Monro), which has now of course put ‘Cheer up sleepy Jean’ into my head, although I suppose it could have been worse it could have put that Elton John song into my head instead. I’m struggling to remember the name of many of the other towns we’ve passed through;
For now though, it’s a case of sitting back, relaxing, enjoying the view and eating some more. If I learn anymore tidbits of useless information then I’ll update this - maybe we’ll go through the cabbage capital of the world - now
that would be exciting!!!
Advertisement
Tot: 0.116s; Tpl: 0.012s; cc: 11; qc: 46; dbt: 0.0556s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.1mb
Wendy
non-member comment
Garlic wine?!? In the words of someone we used to know long ago, the mind boggles! The train journey sounds fantastic though.