well, here i am stuck in the arse-end of portland - what was i thinking when i booked this hotel??? it was cheap i suppose but i'm miles away from town and the hotel is crap - but clean.
to make matters worse, i seem to have caught a stinking cold...
ok, back to yesterday... got up early and walked down the seattle waterfront to the ferry terminal, grabbed a coffee and got on the 9.35 to bainbridge island. the day was grey and cloudy - seattle is like this in the mornings, and the afteroons are gorgeous and sunny.
the ferry was fairly empty and really windy out on the deck! i love being outside on boats, so i stayed outside all the way there and back - i was freezing cold though!
me on the ferry:
the ferry takes 35 minutes to get to bainbridge and when i got there i got off, turned around and got back on! well, time was short!
back to the city and dashed off to buy matt a coffee - now i should probably explain that matt is the guy who rescued 3 strangers from seattle airport the other night after our continental flight was delayed for 3 hours in new york and we arrived in seattle too late for any kind of public transport. so matt scooped us all up and paid for a cab to his car and then dropped us off in seattle, he actually took me to my hotel! it was a great introduction to seattle - very very nice people!
so, matt took me to his favourite coffee place 'stella' just across the road from the seattle art museum - we had nice coffee - my second of the day - and then matt used his trusty iphone to check when the next bus was coming to drop me back to my hotel! very cool!
checked out, but my call to the bank never came up on the bill - yippeee! and then i wheeled my case about 10 blocks to the greyhound bus station... this is where things took a bit of a turn for the worse...
the station was a nightmare, loads of people - no announcements, no screens with info, the most disgusting toilets i've ever seen in the usa. so i queued up and got my bag checked - then got in the queue for the bus and waited. started to feel sick while in the queue (i thought it was a bit too much coffee and no food) - and the bus was an hour late - feeling pretty grim by the time we got on.
bus was full too - i ended up sitting next to a nice guy who was off to see his girlfriend. he was nice and not too chatty. i really thought i was gonna puke and so decided to have a little sleep - the first stop, i went rushing out to use the bathroom only to find that the bus station was closed...
back on the bus - but not feeling as bad. gorgeous gorgeous scenery, mountains and very green, lots of trees - and sunny as you like!
i thought i was gonna be on the bus until around 11pm cos we'd left so late, so was surprised when the bus pulled in to sunny portland at about 6.30pm... very pretty here, but when i realised where my hotel was, i was less keen. didn't help that the hotel is near the convention centre where lady gaga was playing last night - eeek! loads of girls dressed up, etc. this didn't help me feel better about staying there...
i can't even open the curtains as there are no nets, and i'm on the ground floor... boo - am not gonna hang around - am off into town in a bit, but i'm feeling pretty bad and full of cold - and i have no paracetamol... why did i book here for 3 nights?!
ok, hope to be a bit more full of happy tales later!
vx
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