I decided that I'd endured so many endless and disgusting train rides in China that I could easily handle a train experience Stateside. I've done it before -- from New Orleans to Chicago. And it was amazing.
So I bought a ticket the day before I planned to leave Vancouver, proved my American-ness, and got on a train headed back to the States.
It was pretty full, but that only means that all the seats were filled not that people were standing in the aisles, smoking in my face. That, in itself, was a pleasant change.
However, Chinese trains are almost never late. They, in fact, are often early or on time. But this train...for whatever reason...was not. When I bought my ticket, the arrival time was 5:30pm. When I got on the train, the arrival time was 5:50pm. And by the end of the trip, increasing by increments of about 10 minutes, the arrival time was 6:45pm. Poor Rhiannon was waiting at the train station for an hour and a half for me.
Portland turned out to be a pretty generic city. I kept looking for Gus Van Sant's idea of it, but with the clean and orderly streets and traffic and very few people on the street, it just looked like any city in America. And that was not at all interesting.
But I had fun seeing Rhiannon and enjoying her new city with her. We definitely had a lot of catching up to do, and I'm glad we got the opportunity.
At the end of my stay, before I purchased a ticket for form of transportation to San Francisco, Rhiannon decided she wanted to drive there with me. So we convinced her boyfriend and left Portland promptly, driving through that West Coast city at sunset and arriving in the next at sunrise.
