Pacific Northwest

1 province.
2 states.
3 cities.
4 days.

As I will probably never get around to typing up an official trip report, here's a short email I wrote about my flyby visit to Seattle/Portland/Vancouver on Dec. 6--9th. It's too short -- just like my trip was!


I was only in Portland this time for 11 hours because the flooding shut down the highway from Seattle. Bus from Seattle: 8 hours due to detour to Yakima. Luckily the train was running by then, so I got to see my college roommate and her beautiful week-old baby girl.

Seattle was grand; it reminded me of Europe. The first afternoon, while waiting for my train, I visited the R.E.I. flagship store. Then an old college buddy whisked me off to a coffeeshop (independent, natch) and a classic view of the city at night. On my return two days later I played tourist: drank Starbucks while on monorail to Space Needle, watched the flying fish at Pike Place Market.

But my favorite was Vancouver. It's glorious, a city made of sparkling glass, surrounded by water on all sides, enormous hills transitioning into snow-capped mountains in the distance. The vibrancy of a seaside city is thrilling to a Midwestern farmgirl, and the sheer pleasure of taking one of the teensy ferries (not to be confused with fairies) -- about the size of a rowboat -- brings a smile to my face. I was lucky to meet some lovely people in the hostel, hanging out most of the time with a suicidal Englishman and an Aussie who used so many colloquialisms I could hardly understand her. (What's a 'ranga'? Exactly.) Even on the El home I met an interesting fellow named Jaquan, a dead ringer for Terrance Howard, returning from a ski trip to Vermont funded by settlement money from mistakenly being accused of kidnapping. Or something.

Anyway, when I started to imagine honeymooning in Vancouver, I knew I was smitten. The only other place I've done that was Slovenia (with a bit of time in the Budapest baths). So a Slovene wine tour or Pacific skiing; my lucky future husband will get to pick.