The morning after Gareth arrived, we woke up bright (or not) and early at 4:15 am to make our way to LAX. With the happy discovery that an uber at that time would cost over $40, I decided to book parking last minute for about the same amount, but with the added convenience of having my car nearby. It was really quick and totally doable last minute, which allowed us to check the uber price and decide which way made more sense.

We got to the airport and immediately realized it was the first time we were at an airport together not doing a pick up or horribly depressing drop off. Once we both flew to London on the same day, but with different airlines at different terminals, so we got to Logan, had one last trip to Dunks, said goodbye for about 13 hours, and met back up at Heathrow. So we took a million pictures documenting our first plane journey together, and were probably pretty embarrassing.

The flight was only a bit over 2 hours, and I slept through pretty much all of it. (Though not before taking more pictures.) We arrived in Portland and tried to figure out if it was cheaper to rent a car there and drop it off at Seattle, or to take the train. We wanted a car to get around and not be tied to the train schedule, but it was going to be more than double our train tickets, so we went without. (This was definitely the right call, we were in the center of both cities and never went anywhere that wasn’t in walking distance.) Then we went to the metro at the airport which took us right to the center of the city/right by our hotel. And we started an amazing chain of train rides, where we never needed to buy our tickets. We always did buy them, because I fear authority and cause Gareth is the most moral person I’ve ever met, but not one of our trains in the PNW, including the Amtrak between Portland and Seattle, ever checked our tickets. It was crazy.

We arrived before check in, so we went straight for brunch. I tried to be fancy and celebratory and had a pomegranate mimosa, but it made me SO sleepy, so that was probably a mistake! The food was great and Portland was so cool. After breakfast we went to Powell’s Books, which was AMAZING. We could have spent our entire weekend in that store. Gareth found these old books he loves, and I picked up this book about anthropologists, which was fun though kind of dark and also it was kind of annoyingly predictable where if the main character had just stood up for herself once it might have all been avoided. But anyway! Powell’s was perfect.

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After that we went and sat by the waterfront and read. To be honest I was already feeling a little weird, because we were the only people around who weren’t homeless. I know I live in LA where homelessness is a huge problem, but Portland seemed so much worse. It definitely could have been the area we were in (we stayed right in the middle of the city), but it was really shocking and not something I expected. We settled in reading and that was really lovely and great cause, in case this wasn’t already clear, this was our first day together! He had arrived in LA the night before, and it was the first time we’d seen each other since my birthday. So we were all cuddly reading by a tree, when all of a sudden these two groups of men started brawling RIGHT where we were. So we had to jump up and move out of the way, but our bags were still there and we kept having to dart back in to get our stuff. Luckily they all seemed nice (for having a brawl in the park), and tried to give us room/time to get our stuff before carrying on. It was super surreal. We hung around for a bit after that, but it continued to feel pretty sketchy to me, and eventually we decided to just head to the hotel.

Portland was so weird because there was a whole side of it I hadn’t expected at all. The amount of homeless people was shocking. Its crime rate is comparable to Los Angeles, but with WAY less people and in a much smaller city. It also has the most strip clubs per capita in the US. None of this was bad, it was just so different than what I expected! I will say, I’ve been to a lot of places, and definitely some considered relatively dangerous, and Portland was the place I’ve felt the least safe.

We stayed at The Society Hotel, which I definitely recommend. It was walkable to everything and had a great vibe. At this point we were pretty tired/jetlagged and I was (as always) sick, so we took a nap which was glorious. We wanted to go here for dinner, but the wait was over two hours(!), so instead we just walked around and found this SUPER weird, hole in the wall, dungeon looking restaurant. It was such a funny place–they seemed annoyed to have to seat us, our server was so strange, and there was a guy unaffiliated with the restaurant going from table to table doing magic tricks.

Then we went up to the rooftop bar, played cards (I won, obviously), before going to bed relatively early cause Gareth was still on London time and I was still sick.

The next morning we went to the Saturday market which was great. I almost bought a million things, but then didn’t buy any of them, which I was proud of. Gareth had a philly cheesesteak sub, and then another one cause it was SO GOOD. Then we wandered to Voodoo Donuts, but the line was insanely long and neither of us are big donut fans (I know this makes us monsters), so we skipped it. We walked to the train station which was really pretty. It looked like it hadn’t been changed much since it was first built, and I love old, historic buildings.

Our train was an hour late, which was annoying because they never announced that, so everyone got in line, and stayed in line for so long. I’m not sure why, because we all had assigned seats. It seems really illogical we waited in line for so long without just sitting back down, but, uh, we did. I think because it always seemed like the train was just about to pull in. Spoiler alert: it wasn’t.

The train ride was gorgeous. Again no one checked our tickets, though we did have assigned seats, so I guess there’s always the risk the train could be full, but ours definitely wasn’t. About 20 minutes in an alarm started going off, and happened off and on (mostly on) for about an hour while they tried to fix it. Gareth really loved that part of the trip. We mostly read our books and watched the landscape. I really love train rides, and this one was no different. Then we were in Seattle!!

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