Day 1: Trish and Jen's first travel day (A post by Trish)

(Apologies for the delayed posts, we were without wifi for about 18 hours while on the overnight train, which is when I planned to update everyone!)

Alarms set the night before for a 4:30AM rise, we woke up not at all tired, caffeine-needing or flustered. We were actually doing quite well ready for our 5AM taxi pick up, but as I locked my apartment door Jen noticed her bag was leaking quite heavily - turns out in our sleep-deprived state she hadn't properly locked her water bottle, soaking her entire bag. Whoops. We cleaned up quick and headed down to the taxi... little did we know that Jen had accidentally forgotten to put her fancy headphones back into her bag, a realisation that would come 2 hours later when we boarded the train (please note. item #1 for Jen to have shipped back to Kitchener).

Arriving at the train station 1 hour early, as advised, we quickly filled in our declaration forms and then excitedly waited for the coffee shop to open at 6AM before our 6:35AM train departure. Except that boarding started at 5:20AM. So we shuffled into that line, hopeful that on our 8 hour train ride we'd be able to buy a coffee. Please note, at this point we were only hoping for coffee to be available, we'd given no thought to needing any food for the journey, nor had we packed any snacks at all.

When Jen showed the security clerk our boarding passes and let him know that I was with her, she received the greatest validation of all and the theme/mantra of this trip: "Do whatever she says". Well, here we go! 

 Thankfully, shortly after boarding the train the snack kiosk opened and coffee and breakfast were acquired. At the border crossing, Jen and I were first selected to hand in our declaration forms because we seemed the most excited and ready - further authority validation for Jen :D

At our first stop (Bellingham, WA) the conductor loudly announced: "No one is getting off at this stop." which seemed like a very menacing and ominous demand, but we later found out that just meant that they'd let us know when passengers were getting off and new folks were boarding. The next few hours were spent chatting, reading, dozing, listening to podcasts, and excited pointing out the window. A few gems we captured:

 

 

 

 

8.5 hours and 13 stops later, we arrived in Portland:

   

 

Our first destination was to our hotel to drop off our bags, change into clothes appropriate for the near 30 degree weather and head off to the Freaky but True Peculiarium. Many delights were seen here, and you'll just have to see 'em to believe 'em:

(Our new friend Krampus, pictured above).

Next stop was for some ice cream at Fifty Lick's Ice Cream, which had an amazing selection that was too hard to choose from. I went with the toasted milk and Jen with the lavender salted caramel. Heading back toward our hotel we (truly unintentionally!) walked past Powell's bookstore, a city block bookstore that is the largest in the world. We had already planned to spend 2 hours there the following morning, but thought it would be prudent to at least check it out for a quick minute.

...ONE AND HALF HOURS LATER...

Jen and I emerged from the bookstore, full of happiness, delight and completely overwhelmed with the magic of the store. I'd been there before and we knew it would be a special stop, but I don't think we were at all prepared for the joy of endless aisles of books. We also began our purchasing: 2 books for each of us (please note. book count total: Four).

After a quick pop into the hotel to drop off our goods, we decided we were too tired to go further than the hotel restaurant for dinner and shortly after headed off to dream-land with visions of more book purchases floating in our heads.