Portland, Oregon

Today was our longest drive this holiday, so we had a moderately early wake up for the day ahead. Unfortunately it was another bad sleep for both of us, so maybe being around all these bugs freaked us out! Our drive was generally uneventful apart from a toilet and petrol stop!

We left the freeway long enough to drive through Albany for a lunch break. Finding a restaurant to eat was hard enough. Our first stop Dairy Queen, wasn't open. We then went to Carl's Jr which had limited service due to a broken grill. We then went to Wendy's instead since it was the only other decent place nearby!

When we arrived back in Portland, we went straight to our hotel to drop off our bags first. The location is perfect, although it's somewhat odd having a room on the ground floor right next to the restaurant. We then dropped off the car to Hertz nearby, which took a lot longer than planned since a 5 minute drive turned into a 20 minute drive due to all the roadworks in the city.

Ted had been keen on finding a mobile shop as he was worried his sim card was broken since adding the American one. Finding a store was bizarre, since it ended up being a tiny office with one person in a multi-story building. We'd been recommended to see Powell's City of Books, which is the largest independent new and used bookstore in the world. I really liked it a lot and could have spent much more time there, but unfortunately Ted wasn't as interested.

We'd heard there was a waterfront area a short walk away so we thought we'd check it out. Bad move. Unbeknownst to us, we had to walk through the old town area to reach it first. After spending about ten minutes walking through streets of homeless people, ramshackle buildings, and people smoking crack pipes, we did a U-turn and headed back. We have seen some pretty run-down areas in cities before, but this was definitely one of the worst. It was a shame because our opinion of Portland had been a lot higher until this moment.

We went back to our room and ate our leftover food before having a nap. We have changed our flight tomorrow to United instead of Qantas. Vlad was kind enough to check the loads for us, and fortunately there are plenty of seats. We went for a drink at a local venue called Scandals before heading to a decent restaurant on the next block called Cheryl's. I don't know whether it was fatigue or something else, but I fell really ill afterwards with a migraine. When we went out again later, most of the pubs were closing anyway. Tomorrow we head back home after our big adventure.Read more