Vancouver to California via Portland

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So we left Vancouver and headed south on the train with Amtrak - again the views were spectacular and it’s a really easy way to travel and yes we ‘let the train take the strain’ where I was able to listen to the England / Belgium game on the bbc radio player - first game I had missed watching since the World Cup began but probably a good thing in the end.

First stop Portland where amongst other things the TV series Grimm is set. And it all felt a bit grim - not our favourite spot to date but to be fair we had little time to find out more about the city as we had another early start to fly to San Francisco.

We were met at the airport by Elwyn whose house we were going to be in for a week looking after Milo the dog and Bo the cat. To say it was a wonderful setting would be understating it. The house felt like a home and the back yard was a lagoon.

We walked, we cycled, we canoed, we looked after the animals and chilled - a most welcome rest after the mad month before we left and the first few weeks of travelling with back to back early starts.
We even went along to a free open air rock concert on the Friday early evening and still had time to get back before our daughter Ella joined us as she flew into SF from China.

It was great to be able to meet up while we travelled. Sue and Ella then went canoeing the following morning which ended up with both swimming in the lagoon but only one doing it purpose!

Sad to move on and leave Milo the next day we headed into SF proper to have a go at the touristy things - more on that another time

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