Arriving in Oregon

Yesterday we arrived in Portland after our 18hr train journey on Amtrak. On our last day in San Fran the weather improved a hell of a lot and it felt warmer than the British summer. We decided to head to a place that had been featured on Anthony Bourdain. Red's Java House was located towards the edge of downtown underneath the Bay Bridge. Un-pretentious, simple american food was on the menu and it was pretty damn good. 

                                      

 Outside on the patio at Red's

 Entrance to Red's

As the weather was warmer today it felt right to take a trip across town to Ocean Beach. The beach was surprisingly huge and seemed completely deserted considering the weather. In the UK you wouldn't have been able to move for the crowds on a similar scene. The area along the beach was fairly quiet and had a fairly laid back Hippy vibe going on.

 Hippy house at the beach

A couple of hours lying down at the beach was just what was needed after last night. before heading back to downtown we stopped off at a juice bar where the guy obviously felt sorry for us only having 4 dollars between us and gave us $1.50 off our drinks. Good way to finish the day.

Our train to Portland left at 10:00pm from Emeryville just outside SF. A bus from the Amtrak ticket office takes you straight there and comes as part of the ticket price. It can safely be said that rail travel in the US is about 100 years behind the rest of the world. The trains are big and very slow although they redeem themselves in the seating which was comfortable enough to attempt sleeping in. Not a great deal to see on the way, mainly trees and a few areas of nice mountainous scenery. The train did stop occasionally with, it seems, the sole purpose of letting the smokers off to fulfil their cravings. The crazies from San Fran obviously travel by train as there were a few dancing around the platform when we stopped in nowheresville.

One of the few train stops (complete with crazy dancing man on the left)

It was good to finally get to Portland although we are looking forward to heading back to San Francisco on our trip back down south. We will hopefully be staying outside of downtown when we return and look forward to being somewhere with a more character.

We'll have an update on Portland in the next post. Tonight should be interesting as it is American Election night and we should be having a few drinks accordingly.