Stop 12: Portland

Well, not the most exciting of cities to be brutally honest, hence this uneventful post, sorry fans!

We spent a night in a very glamorous basement apartment (yes, really) with ultra-chic decor, and at the prompting of our host stayed up until 12:45am to view the Blood Moon eclipse - apparently only visible from North and South America - but were disappointed to find the clouds eclipsed the eclipse, and our beauty sleep had been disturbed for nothing.

We spent our one day here exploring the city centre, and people watching in Union Square - the highlight being observing a man very proudly modelling a rather fetching ankle tag (swoon...), who seemed to be searching for someone called Mary, bellowing her name across the square like the call of a dying bull. We did hear Mary's distant answering mating call, and waited in anticipation to see what she looked like - sadly we never found out.

We travelled out of the city to Washington Park in an unsuccessful attempt to visit the Japanese Rose Gardens/pretend to be cultural and were a little annoyed to find we'd missed the hourly bus onward to the park and didn't have time to wait for the next one, as we needed to get to the airport.

Next stop - San Francisco!!!! Eagerly anticipating one of the promised highlights of our trip, and the sunshine and increasing temperatures awaiting us as we travel further south down the West Coast and reach sunny California.