Sun, Sea, and Unseen Sasquatches

I am pleased to report that zero melt downs were had in the making of this post. I'm not sure whether it's the minimal driving or the fact that I was on the west coast, my home turf, or the fact that I slowed down a bit. But I am pleased to report that no meltdowns were had in the making of this week's post. 

On my way into LA I stopped off at the Getty Center, free to enter but 20$ parking although also accessible by bus. I've mentioned a few times that art is not really my thing so I whipped around the galleries at a truly remarkable pace. Before strolling around the gardens much more sedately. 

I stayed in the Venice Beach Hostel located about a 15 minute walk from the beach on a quiet suburban road. The beds are exactly as loud and squeaky as the reviews say and I found it to be a little bit of a boys club. But the atmosphere was extremely welcoming with several of the staff members saying that they'd previously stayed at the hostel and now worked there so they could continue to hang out with each other. And the "boys club" aspect I kinda got more of the impression that there was a core group of guys who were trying to advise the guests on where was safe and what to do to get the best out of their stay in LA rather than any yobbishness. 

Anyway on my first day in LA I spent most of the morning chilling in the hostel before I joined two of the guys from the hostel, called Baha and Ahmed, for a walk down Venice Beach.  We walked for about an hour and they pointed out the body builders, skate park, and transformers. 

The following day was great because I got to drop my car off. Not many people are excited to drive to LAX but I was. Because I'd been warned that walking around downtown Hollywood and LA isn't necessarily the safest thing I'd decided to do a hop on hop off tour bus. It was kinda interesting talking about all the Hollywood gossip and haunts but I couldn't stop giggling over the people who were recording the whole thing in their phones kinda forgetting that the audio track coming through their headphones putting it all in context was what actually made all the nondescript skyscrapers interesting. 

I did hop off in Beverly Hills and go to Rodeo Drive to live out my Pretty Woman dreams. But man am I in the wrong tax bracket. Although it's weird right at the end of Rodeo Drive they've built it like the corner of a roman palazzo, complete with fountain. It's totally surreal. 

On my way back from the tour bus start point I did have to brave LA's public transport system. I have two things I really want to get off my chest about public transport and public spaces in general in the USA. 

1. Basically every city and administrative district has its own system. Almost none of them let you pay contactless. Most of them you have to buy physical passes for or pay exact cash for. After covid this is ridiculous. 

2. California does not have a homelessness problem. AMERICA has a homelessness problem. The reason why there are more homeless people in California than in other states is because there are more people in California than there are in other states. And if one more American tells me about how much tax they pay when they pay less tax than I do and get the services to reflect that they are going to get a lecture from me on their Christian duty to help their neighbours, clothe their elders, and feed their children!

The following day I went to the La Brea Tar Pits which was one of the things on my must see list while in LA. (I did see the Hollywood sign, but it was very quickly on the bus tour and I didn't get a good photo). Ahmed joined me and we wandered around the museum together. La brea is really cool, it's kinda a unique geological formation right in the middle of downtown Los Angeles where thousands of palaeolithic animals got trapped in tar and have been preserved. To the extent that the La Brea Tar Pits have allowed scientists to identify details like sexual dimorphism and is still an area of active research. 

I could have happily stayed there until it closed but Ahmed wanted to get lunch before going to work, and I think he was a little worried about me being alone downtown so wanted to give me a ride back to the hostel. He's Turkish so he took me to his favourite place to get some food from home, although at time of writing I can neither remember the name of the restaurant nor the dishes names but everything was delicious. 

In the picture below the plate on the right is an eggplant dip with garlic and pitta dipper triangles, the plate on the right is Ahmed's favourite from his region of Cappadocia which was a teeny-tiny lamb ball in a little pasta wrapper in a mint yoghurt sauce.

My boat to Southampton leaves New York on 26th May and I would like a little bit of time in New York beforehand so I'm on the clock. So it was time to say goodbye and leave LA. The following two days I mostly spent on trains in Amtrak's tender hospitality. But I had arranged to meet-up with a friend who happened to be in Eugene, Oregon. So I made excellent use of my Amtrak pass and broke my trip up the west coast into two segments and joined Jean for lunch where she showed me some of her old haunts before I got on the train 4 hours later to go the rest of the way to Seattle. 

I love Seattle. 

I'm sure I've got a bad case of rose tinted spectacles. But I just love the city. I love the architecture, I love the mountains, I love the forests, I love the ocean, I love the food, I love the fashion, I love the music, I love even the politics. 

Paris is overrated in my opinion, go to Seattle. 

All that being said I actually didn't spend that much time in the city itself on this trip a few things didn't line up and like I said I'm on the clock to get back to New York and I've been to Seattle quite a few times before so I spent one day just soaking it all in. I did a walking tour, went to the Seattle Art Museum (SAM), Pike Place, that kind of thing and then hopped on a ferry to the Peninsula to stay with an old friend of my dad in the very picturesque town of Port Townsend. 

Someone must have scheduled the weather wrong because it was grey and cloudy the whole time I was in California but blue skies and sunshine the whole time I was in the Pacific Northwest. 

This meant I had a spectacular crossing of Puget Sound, the seven mile body of water between Seattle and the Olympic Peninsula. The Cascade mountains on one-side, Olympics on the other, the Seattle skyline disappearing behind us and Mount Rainier seeming to hover to the south (hilariously seemingly held up by cranes). It was a truly beautiful crossing to Baimbridge. Because I had a bus connection I had to immediately rush off but I'm told Baimbridge is a popular day trip for many Seattleites, and it's only about 10$ for a ticket. Even on a cloudy day crossing Puget sound gives wonderful atmospheric views as the islands seem to materialise out of the mist. 

In fact it was such a beautiful day that I went sunbathing (in jeans and a t-shirt but sunbathing) in the Pacific Northwest when I arrived in Port Townsend because it was 25c! This is practically unheard of. 

Tim then showed me the town. I had been to Port Townsend before but it was about 12 years before so my memories were a little fuzzy. But it's a beautiful little town focused around a centre built Victorian era. So it's all red brick with crazy froufrou decorations around the doors and windows along main street. The US also has what are called "Queen Ann" style buildings, I'll link some pictures here, but they're often the original inspiration for the really gothic buildings or just the actual building allowed to fall into disrepair used in horror movies. But when they well kept their beauty. Usually they're one of a kind wood clad buildings with turrets and porches and they're bonkers. Port Townsend has a wealth of them.

And I love it. 

The first night Tim took me out to a Japanese restaurant and introduced me to Sake which I probably shouldn't be writing here because I might be getting Tim in trouble with my mother after the last person in my family he introduced to Sake. So I shall leave it at that. 

The food was delicious though. 

The following day Tim took me whale watching. I'd never been before but had a brilliant time. It took a little while for the boat to find find anything but after about an hour we spotted our first whale which was a juvenile humpback whale which the crew said had likely been left in Puget Sound by its mother to winter there while she went back south to Mexico or Hawaii and would be returning in a few months with a new calf. It was incredible. We spent about 20 minutes watching the whale and a few harbour porpoises popped up and showed off their flukes before some other whale watching boats joined us so we headed off so as not to stress the whale. 

The crew then headed to "Whale Rock '' which is very popular with sea lions and not whales. Looking very lazy and sunning themselves on the rocks. There was also a bald eagle in a nest so I was able to see the full spectrum of wildlife. 

I'd like to say thank you to Tim for letting me use some of the photos he took, aren't they beautiful?

On my last day in Port Townsend Tim took me up to Chimockee Ridge for a hike. It's some land that the Land Trust Tim works for is looking to acquire and convert into a community forest. I had a great time just walking through the forest, I do miss the forests of the pnw when I'm in the UK. It was also fun because Tim is such an expert and his passion for this land is so evident in pointing out the woodpecker and bear marks on trees. Tim was telling me all about the geology of the region as the ridge was formed by two glacial basins on either side. 

Back at the house Tim very kindly offered to let me use his washing machine which was good because my jeans hadn't been washed since New Orleans and I was beginning to worry that they were about to gain sentience.

Unfortunately because I'm on a bit of a deadline I had to leave Tim and Port Townsend the following day. So Tim gave me a lift to Port Angeles and I took the ferry to Victoria in British Columbia in Canada. I wanted to go to the Anthropology museum in Vancouver which is supposed to be one of the best in the world, but that's under renovations. As is the human exhibition in the Royal British Columbia Museum in Victoria too as I discovered when I got there. I still had a good time going around the natural history part of the museum, where they had displays on palaeontology (so like dinosaurs) and geology they'd done in British Columbia and western Canada. 

Victoria is a beautiful little town so I direct ferry to Seattle so I decided to stay there rather than going on to Vancouver and having a few chill days before getting the train to Chicago. 

This was a decision I would somewhat come to regret…..sorta.

If you're ever in Victoria, British Columbia I would recommend the Ocean Inn Backpackers Hostel. It's the only hostel I've ever stayed at that has breakfast AND dinner included. 

There's not a huge amount to do in Victoria itself. It seems to be a bit like going to somewhere like York or Brighton, it has a quaint seafront, a few things to do, a nice shopping district, and is a good base to go hiking in the scenic surrounding countryside. 

Like I said I'd recommend the Royal British Columbia museum is very good, probably excellent when the anthropological galleries are open. I also really enjoyed wandering around the rabbit warren that is Market Square and Paper Arcade. They're just off the wharf front and part of the old Victoria brick buildings. Market Square is open air designed around courtyards, a little like Covent Garden. But they're the kind of places that you get completely lost on the turn lost and pop out back on the main street you were on 20 minutes ago. They also have about 15 vintage stores between them so they're a brilliant place to find a bargain. 

Actually Victoria has loads of second hand/vintage stores to the extent that I'm not sure where you could buy anything new for these vintage stores to buy from you. 

Speaking of old things I also went to Gala Fabrics in the more modern district which had a fabulous selection and I bought some pumpkin orange wool for 10 cad a yard which I'm planning to make a mantua au lit with the colours inspired by the chocolate girl portrait for an event I'm going to just after I get back and sewing will give me something to do on the train and boat home.

In the evening I went out with some people, Paula and Kim, I met at my hostel to a live music venue called Hermann's Upstairs Lounge. It's this cute little jazz place that was having an open mic night. Everybody was really good and the one or two who were a bit wobbly you could tell just needed a little practice to get over their nerves rather than lacking talent. I had a really good time and one of the people in my group even performed  again. It took him a little while to get over his nerves because it was a bit spontaneous but by the time he settled into it he really started to relax.

I spent a very nice morning in the harbour where the local Salish tribe was doing some kind of cultural event where families were canoeing in and asking to come ashore. I'm not sure exactly what the purpose of this was, it was tying into a new exhibition the museum was opening the following week. But it was nice I think they try to do this every year and it had a festival kind of feel with the local kindergarten bringing a class of kids out and artisans selling their wares on the quay front. Also the canoers deserve a lot of credit for canoeing in traditional wood dugout canoes in a working harbour where there were ferries moving around in, they were 10+ person war canoes but they're still not that big.

Now if you have high blood pressure or anxiety issues don't do what I did. I said at the top that no meltdowns occurred in the making of this post. I came very very close here. The ferry from Victoria to Seattle arrived in Seattle less than an hour before the train to Chicago was due to leave. And I'd been made to check my bag in Victoria so I actually had 30 minutes to get across town at 4:30. Now, it's a 10 minute drive so it's doable but I cut it way closer than I normally like to and a very nice family did let me hop in a taxi in front of them. I think the fact that I think I looked a little deranged and was raving about missing my train helped. But if I hadn't got that taxi I really would have missed the train. It's the closest change I've made so far, normally I like to give myself more wiggle room but I literally got to the station as they announce boarding. So I was extremely grateful to both the family who let me have the taxi and the driver. 

But I made the train! 

And I shall leave you there, mostly because it was a three day trip to Chicago with no wifi where I'm currently writing from and will update you from the East Coast in a few days.