Ruthie On The Road

Another few days have gone since updating the blog so here is what has been happening. As most of you know from my facebook, I successfully retrieved Helen from the SeaTac airport on Saturday night.  Tired and full of cold I think she was pleased to have reached her first destination.  She went to bed pretty quickly in no mood to discuss future plans but I figured I might get a better reception the following morning.

Sunday and we went on the bus to the Convention Centre to see about the Discovery passes at the Greyhound depot.  We both purchased a 15 day pass and this would take us up to 2 days before our departure back to London and get us safely to Boston, with a bit of look.  Monday we would depart to Portland on the way to San Francisco and Las Vegas.

Back in Seattle we walked to the Space Needle and went on the 360 degree walk around the top. The day started off a damp but soon brightened up and the cloud lifted to reveal the mountain Rainier on the Seattle skyline.  After the obligatory walk around the gift shop we walked to Pike Place market with a fair bit of ‘are we nearly there yet’ on Helen’s part.  After a good look round and some late lunch we went looking round the shops and to a free demonstration of the new cirque de sol show that is in town.   Then back to the hostel with a selection of food from the international district food court and settled in for movie night.

Monday with are discovery passes in hand we went to the greyhound depot again and got the bus to Portland, Oregon and actually arrived 10 minutes early, which is completely unheard of.  A bit more moaning from Helen to get to the hostel we dropped off our bags and headed straight for the Blue Moon brewpub up the road.  A few pints down and conversation turned to trying to organise a few things for the days to come and working out what we were going to do and where.  Tuesday morning we got up a little later, trying to avoid the lovely old lady from Bristol who spent hours talking at us last night. We walked straight to Powell’s books where I traded in my old book for credit towards two new ones.  We spent a long time in there trawling through bookcase after bookcase of romantic fiction (unfortunately we are both addicted to the happy ever after) and had coffee. From here we decided to brave the shops and see if we could stick to the no spending rule.  I managed to only buy a t shirt so I was very pleased with myself.

We walked a long the water front and back to stand in the queue for the Voodoo Doughnuts. Helen purchased a selection to take video footage of and I got one called Captain my captain with multicoloured cereal on top, it did taste better than it sounded.  Both pretty tired after a full day we had an early night and I settled down to one of my new books. I keep smiling at how comfortable I feel with everything and how simple things seem, that is until I start to thing about money, but I am happily in denial for at least 2 more weeks.

Portland’s café culture suites me down to the ground and we walked up to 23^rd St with a lot of little boutique style shops interspersed with coffee shops and tea houses on a tree lined streets.  We set up camp in a lovely little tea house with Helen discovering the merits of bubble tea and me getting the chance to read out of date UK magazines and discover that 6 months doesn’t change things at all in the celebrity media world.  Later we started the bus journey to San Francisco travelling through the night and arriving in Sacramento for breakfast and San Francisco around lunchtime.  We were both completely shattered. Neither of us got much sleep and I looked like shit. The first thing I did in the hostel was have a shower to wake up and so that I didn’t scare the other guests.  The hostel seems nice, it really big and has a cosy sitting area and free breakfast to start the day right.