We Can't Take That Stuff to Canada: USA

We arrived in Portland in the late afternoon and got the bus to our AirBnB. We stayed in the basement flat of a family in the north of the city. They were really nice and were both artists so the flat walls were covered with pictures. They even left us a beer in the fridge that had our name on it!

We headed straight out to get some food at a local bar called Grain and Gristle and had some really good mussels and beer.
The next day we caught the bus into town and had a look round the Sunday market, it was very busy as it was the first weekend of spring break and also the first day of good weather they'd had for a while. Portland is known as bridge town due to the large number of bridges crossing the river, most of them either swing, pivot or lift out of the way to allow large ships to pass through, although the shipping traffic isn't as frequent as it used be.

Old town

One of the many bridges and cherry blossom

We continued to wander around the city centre and spent a while browsing a giant book shop called Powells which took up an entire block and had secondhand and new books all mixed in together. I doubt there was a book you couldn't find there. Unfortunately we had to settle for a few postcards as we were already at our luggage limit!
We had lunch at a place called Kenny & Zukes which is famous for its in house pastrami. I had a Reuben which was delicious, I didn't think it was possible to fit that much meat into a sandwich! The other thing Portland is famous for apart from its bridges is beer. It has over 30 breweries in the city boundaries so it would be rude not to visit a couple. We stopped off a Deschutes brewery and had a few samples to wash down our pastrami.

In the evening we decided to just head back to flat with a pizza and a few beers.

Eat pizza

Beer

The following day was pretty similar to the first, we explored some different areas and had more good food and drink at the Rouge bar and distillery.

Eat pizza

A New Crustacean barleywinish imperial IPA sorta - silly name but nice beer.

We also had doughnuts from the famous Voodoo Doughnut shop. Mine was shaped like a voodoo doll with a pretzel stuck through its heart. They were good and worth the 20 minute queue.

Voodoo doughnut

Doughnut

Portland is a really cool town with a ridiculous amount of good places to eat and drink. There's a very local feel to it and I can imagine its a really nice place to live. The people were really friendly and I don't think we got the bus once without someone striking up a conversation with us about the weather or where we were from etc.

The next day we got the train to Seattle. For some reason as we boarded every passenger was given a souvenir leatherette coaster embossed with the Amtrak logo. Maybe someone ordered too many.

Portland Train station

We stayed in a hotel in Fremont which is an area just north of the centre of Seattle and is the self proclaimed 'centre of the universe'. It's one of those 'cool' areas with lots of coffee shops, bars, restaurants and street art. A bit like a mini Portland really. Our lack of tattoos and pearcings meant we were in the minority.

On our first night we went to a really good sushi restaurant opposite the hotel.

Sashimi & Tempura

Seattle was where we got our first taste of the famous Pacific North West weather that we would have to get used to. It rained a lot while we were there. Rose even started having second thoughts about Vancouver when she found out that it rains even more there! On our first full day we went and explored the city centre. The Pike Place market was cool and we saw all the tourists queuing to buy a drink at the original Starbucks.

Inside the Market

Flowers

The original Starbucks

We then walked up to the Space Needle via the sculpture park.

Rose and sculpture

Space needle and sculpture

Space Needle

Monorail

As Seattle is another city famous for its breweries, we stopped off at the Elysian brew pub for a couple before we headed back to Fremont.

The next day was one I'd been looking forward to for a while as it was the day of the Twin Peaks road trip! (If you haven't seen it Twin Peaks was a TV show in 90s directed by David Lynch about a murder in a small town http://youtu.be/UXjTEw9Qm0k) We hired a car and armed with the addresses of the filming locations and a sat nav we set off into the mountains. (If you haven't seen or don't like Twin Peaks I apologise as this bit will be even less interesting to you than this blog usually is.) Our first stop was Big Ed's gas station which unfortunately is now completely gone and has been replaced by a plumbing shop which wasn't even worth photographing. Next up was the Roadhouse pub which has recently reopened as a proper roadhouse.

Roadhouse from Twin Peaks

A couple of miles further up the road was the Snoqualmie falls and the Great Northern Hotel. The waterfall was pretty impressive and definitely one of the best we've seen on our trip - we seem to have visited a lot of waterfalls.

As it was nearly lunch time we headed to the the Double R Diner (actually called Twede's in real life) for some lunch. We both had huge burgers which came with all you can eat fries although I don't know if they get many people asking for more. Even though we were both stuffed after the burgers we couldn't leave without having a slice of the famous cherry pie.

Cherry Pie and coffee

The Double R with mountains in the background

We also stopped off at the high school.

Twin Peaks high school doors

We stumbled across an old railway museum near the school with loads of old decaying steam trains which were really interesting (to me anyway). The area had a big logging industry at one time and the logs were shipped out on the railway, but now the line is just used by the museum to run tourist trips in the summer and I don't think it's connected to the main network anymore. There was some old logging equipment there two which showed how big the trees were that they used to cut up.

One of the restored trains

Rusting trains

Rose next to a big log

On the way back to Seattle we stopped off at the Boeing museum of flight and saw the original shed where Boeing started life as well as the old Air Force One used by Kennedy and Nixon amongst others.

Air Force One and Concorde

The Presidents Office

Rose will talk to anyone

The original Boeing workshop and offices

On our last day in Seattle we walked around Fremont looking at all the street art including an original Soviet Lenin statue and a giant Troll eating a VW Beetle.