TUESDAY 27/09/22 The Portland-Seattle Amtrak train we had booked a couple of months previously was unceremoniously cancelled with just one week’s notice, with no alternative routes or transport offered. Nice. We rebooked the 175 mile, three-and-a-half-hour journey on Flixbus which, ironically, departed from opposite the Portland railway station. Whilst checking the line of passengers on board we thought the driver …
SATURDAY 24/09/22 The day started off so well. Beautiful sunrise, warm morning sun, and a luxury ride to Oakland Airport, thanks to Mark taking us door to door in his Jaguar XJ. We were straight through security and into the departure lounge within 15 minutes and everything was on schedule. Unfortunately, it started going downhill from there… As we boarded …
Mrs. Belvoir and I have wanted to return to the States ever since we returned from our epic East-Coast tour, four years ago. This West-Coast jaunt was originally pencilled in for last year, but a spiky little bastard named Covid put a stop to that, and so we re-scheduled for 2022. The original plan was to fly into San Francisco …
SATURDAY 25/6/22 We made the 186-mile journey from Lisbon to Porto by coach for an insanely cheap price of 11 Euros each. The journey was comfy enough and took in some lovely scenery along the route, although the large, loud woman in front was taking constant calls on speaker phone and the girl across the aisle was jabbing her mobile …
This visit was actually a rearranged trip, the original having been cancelled two years previously because of the Covid-19 malarky. Then, the plan was to fly into Porto, then bus to Lisbon and fly home from there. As it happens, because flight routes have changed since lockdown, we were doing it the opposite way and on June 21st 2022 we …
Watching the troubling, distressing and very worrying news from the Ukraine on TV in the last couple of days, I can’t help wondering ‘When will we learn?’ Invasions of entire Nations, certainly in modern history, don’t work. Just look at Germany & Japan in WWII, Iraq in Kuwait, and more recently the US/UK in Afghanistan. All failures. I won’t drone …
WEDNESDAY 5/9/18 The day started with us making the journey from Buffalo back to Niagara Falls to drop off the hire car, before making the crossing over Rainbow Bridge into Canada by foot. The difference between the US and Canadian sides of the Falls on each immediate side of the bridge is quite different, and if you ever visit, you …
SUNDAY 2/9/18 We left our Pittsburgh motel around 10ish to start the 120 mile-odd drive to Erie, which is on the coast of Lake er, Erie. Having not taken advantage of the stale bagels back at the motel, we were all getting rumbly tumblies it was time to look for somewhere to stop for breakfast. After passing several off-ramps, we …
FRIDAY 31/8/18 For this leg of the journey, we decided to get a hire car, which Tracey had volunteered to drive. Although I was very grateful and more than happy to have her do the driving duties, it was a little disconcerting that she went to get in the car on the wrong side when we set off 🙂 It …
TUESDAY 28/8/18 We boarded the 10.20 Greyhound bus bound for Philadelphia, another four-hour journey including a 20-minute stop-off in Baltimore. It was on this bus that we encountered the only miserable person of the entire holiday. The driver was a surly and downright rude man who could obviously do with some lessons at Charm School. When Tracey made a call …
