Got on the train at 7:30am in Seattle and by lunchtime I was through customs with my feet on Canadian soil in Vancouver. Easy peasy. Spent the first 4 days staying in a Downtown hostel so I could explore the city and then relocated to shared accommodation on the University of British Columbia campus to use as my base for job and flat hunting purposes. First impressions of Vancouver: it's pretty, really pretty. Surrounded by water everywhere and lots of ...

Starbucksville. An interesting city famous for (and proud of) its rain, Starbucks, Amazon and Jimi Hendrix. They´re also pretty proud of Sleepless in Seattle despite it being one of the sappiest movies ever made. There is certainly a strong history of entrepreneurism and uber-wealth and I liked that it has resulted in a lot of investment in creative public spaces. One of the co-founders of Microsoft built the Experience Music Project museum in a crazy lo...

The train trip from San Fran to Portland has definitely been the most picturesque so far. Boarded the train in the evening after a 24 degree day in the sun and woke up among snowy mountain tops and lakes - just beautiful. I really liked Portland, even staying on an extra night for a total of five nights, but I feel like I didn't actually fully come to grips with the psyche of the place. The general vibe is relaxed, efficient, professional but quite arty a...

Stayed with John D for 5 days in Dublin, south of San Fran city. We went to Napa for some wine tasting and figured out that the wineries with very grand grounds and tasting rooms are usually overcompensating for not so great wine, but we had some great wines too. Went to Flight of the Conchords final show in their latest tour which was at Berkeley. I had expected there to be quite a few kiwis at the show but we were few and far between - just as well the local...

Well there's not too much to say about my stay in San Diego because I spent most of it in or around the pool at the hotel. All the touristing had become a bit tiring. I did spend one day at San Diego zoo which just confirmed for me that Auckland Zoo is up there with the best, certainly in terms of the size and nature of the enclosures. For the train from San Diego to San Francisco I missed out on a coach seat so unfortunately was "forced" to upgrad...