The Day we were had, Part 2

So we decided that Sweden would join us and sit in the middle seat of the worst car known to man.
Our destination, Portland Oregon. Our knowledge of Portland Oregon, minimal. Our mistake, large.
It took us about 5 or 6 hours drive from the magnificent San Francisco and we drove into Oregon refreshed as the scenery of said state was quite stunning. We passed through a whole bunch of mountainous areas covered with trees and moss carved through by large lakes an long rivers. This marvelous scenery gave us false hope about Portland. While the layout and look of the city were fairly nice, the people and the place were rather bland. Not particularly bad, just forgettable. We picked up a 5 person room which had a bunk with a double bed underneath it, which Chris and Rhys shared in order to make sweet, sweet love. I'm pretty surre I heard them deep in the night. I was particularly chuffed with the top bunk as it allowed me to create a tent like situation by using the pipes above me and a large blanket we found in the closet. That night MJ stayed in due to his sickness and Sweden, Chris, Rhts and I braved the cold to go to the pub. The food was ok, but again, forgettable. We wandered for a while then gave up and returned to sleep. Chris and I got bagels to use the vegimite with that we'd bought in San Francisco at the Australian Store. It was awesome and made me a little homesick. I'm craving a Cherry Ripe so badly. On our way out of Oregon we stopped at Powell's books which was literally as big as a city book. The place was divided into 8-9 sections ranging from comuics to romance to biographies, anything. I picked up 4 mangas and had to resist getting more cause my wallet was not safe. We then took a drive up a faily steep hill to visit the japanese garden which was, according to the japanese ambassador the 'Most authentic garden outside of Japan''. I'd recommend it to anyone who appreciates that kind of thing, it was amazingly peaceful. The drive from Portland to Seattle was covered with heavy rain. So heavy that Chris considered pulling over at one point. We drove past Mt St Helen, the active volcano which exploded in 1980 killing 50+ people and generally screwing shit up. We wanted to see it but the rain would have made a satisfying viewing nearly impossible. Seattle was very cold, to the point that we were afraid that MJ was going to keel over and die. The best thing was that our beds were already caves and double, some of the best sleeps on the trip. We tried to do as much as we could in the short time we were there so we zipped down the markets and I picked up some goodies from the various gift shops and the well stockef comic shop. We got coffee from the worlds first Starbucks which still sported the original brown mermaid logo. It was good that they'd pretty much kept it in it's original look with creaky wooden floors and old style menus. That night we went and had Terminator Stout at a pub up the road then went to play pool and go bowling.. After I schooled the boys at pool I realised they had cider and needless to say I was a little too drunk to bowl properly. We didn't do much the next day apart from going up the Seattle Space Needle. The view was amazing from all the way up there but freaking freezing and you could only stay outside for so long before getting too cold. I also tried 'space chocolate' from the gift shop and realised I should't have done so. I'll leave you all there dear readers. Give my love to all the d-bags who don't read my blog and give youselves hugs from me. Happy Travels, Reece