Portland, Seattle and Vancouver

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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 from one end to the other in 30 minutes. Portland also had a very large Redwood forest park which I enjoyed wandering about aimlessly on our second day there. Ben did not like the tourist map though, which suggested the park was 2 minutes from downtown but ended up being 20- and up a large hill. It was indeed good to be out in a forest once again.

After Portland we headed up towards Seattle, which had an even better setting, right by the waterside. There, we took in the monorail, Bainbridge Island- which was a fun little ferry ride across the bay and the city's pretty cool buildings- one looks like its upside down, with a huge concrete 'cone' at the base. The city was also full of coffee shops and a fair number of brewery pubs that were fantastic for tasting honey and chocolate beers among others.

And so, a final hop onto the Greyhound Bus led us up to Vancouver where we spent our last few days doing in Vancouver what we have done in most other cities, walking about, checking out the sights and plastering on the suncream. It's supposed to be wet up in this region but apart from a few wee spots of drizzle it's so hot and you sweat all over your clean t-shirt in five minutes. Vancouver had some good shade though and Stanley Park, by the bay, was refreshing. The park there has a Robert Burns statue though, being ned-free, Vancouver doesn't need to stick it on a pedestal.

And now were back, 6 weeks of (albeit shortened) journeying across the USA and Canada has been a fantastic experience with not one bad day -though Ben may disagree. Fair enough, we never did rent a car which was a shame but would have left us even more out of pocket but instead we got to places we never planned to and had plenty fun wandering about and getting a small feel of America. Ben may detest me for my constant walking but he can now sit back with a Strongbow keg attached to his veins and marvel at stronger thigh muscles at the very least!

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Comments

[Matt]

Feel I should post a comment before you close. Hadn't got round to reading a lot of this til now (sorry), sounds pretty good - good overview anyway; same kinda vein as Davie and my tour o' Europe (only you were 'planning' this for what, 2/3years?). No doubt see ya both soon...