Portland - 3 Days

umm so since Alex wrote up the details of most of the Canada trip from winter break, i decided to not actually write up what happened for the majority of it. but before i decided to be a lazy hobo like that, i actually had stuff written for the pre-Canada time in Portland. i meant to post this like way earlier but i forgot, so hereee it is now before even more time passes.

THURSDAY
we got into the train station and nina's friend allison was there to pick us up. we all squished ourselves into her car, nina and i shared the front seat and we just sorta shoved a lot of luggage into the back on top of people. we were dropped off at nina's house and threw all our stuff downstairs, got a tour of the place, and met her housemate erica and a few of erica's friends. we then walked over to allison's house which was pretty nearby and tried to figure out snowboarding plans, but we called to make reservations and they said they didn't have any left for friday soo we decided to just go snowboarding in vancouver.

after that was settled we borrowed allison's car and nina was very nice and drove us downtown to the grocery store so we could get food and drinks (she was done with finals and wanted to celebrate lol, and since we weren't snowboarding the next day why not~). she got a cider and some apricot thingy, ryan and alex got some newcastle and heineken, and i got some mike's hard lemonade. we went back to her place and she dropped the car off at allison's while the rest of us threw together dinner. no microwave, so everything took foreveeer in the oven. i split some vegetarian chicken taquitos with alex, they were okay. i started drinking my lemonade with the end of them, and once ryan was out of the shower and his food was finally done we played king's cup. it is a very silly drinking game. i tried the newcastle beer and nina's stuff but they all tasted gross.

then alex and nina and jay and homer and i drove to vancouver (washington, not canada) to this pool hall where we were meeting this guy patrick. i kept saying i was going to be sooo good at pool but i lost both of the games i played, one against nina (which took forever we were both sucking so hard XD) and one against homer. i took some pictures and it felt like we were there only twenty minutes but then all of a sudden wtf it had been two hours and it was midnight, and the pool hall was closing.

FRIDAY
nina and i woke up in the morning at like 9:30am to the sound of water dripping. surprise! just the day before ryan was talking about how it looked like water leaked down into her basement bedroom and she was like "nah that's never happened." which of course meant it had to happen the very next day. the toilet flooded or something and it decided to come down into nina's room. :/. we spent a bit of time moving all her stuff out of that corner of the room and trying to dry things up. her and jay called the plumber and after the bathroom was mostly cleaned i took a shower and got up for the day and ate a bagel or two. ryan was sort of hungover so he walked around outside and went to taco bell. i just sort of chilled on my laptop for a while. eventually everyone was up and the plumber was on his way so we left the house at like 2 to go to chipotle downtown. it was deliciousss.

after that we walked a bit through downtown to get to powell's bookstore, which is gigantic and awesome and amazing. we spent like a really long time in there, because clearly i just need more books to read i mean i just don't have enough. sami somehow got nothing, ryan got like one music book thing, nina and alex each got 10+ and i got like six or seven. i got one of dave duncan's older books in a newer looking binding, two books on linguistics (one debunking common linguistic myths, one on the linguistics of texting), the third demon wars book, and a coupl eothers i'm not remembering. they had this thing where they'd ship your books for $13 to anywhere if you bought ten or more, so alex and i got all ours shipped back down to california which was awesome.

from there we took public transportation to the zoo, which was open at night for this special zoo lights thing. they basically had like a fuckton of christmas lights in the shape of animals or random things or just decorating trees and archways. it was actually fairly awesome, although the train ride thing which was part of the package wasn't exactly worth the 30 minute wait but oh well, it was fun anyway. it was also a bit sad that we couldn't see most of the animals because, well, they were asleep and the sun was down, but we did see like sea otters and some monkeys. we also found the place we played at before near the great ape area with like the vines you could swing across on but it was blocked off which was saaaad. we did take pictures again with the bears by the gift shop, tho. XD.

after we got back ryan and alex and i ordered a pizza from dominoes and sami and nina cooked some food things of their own. after eating i had to make nina the cookies i owed her. sami wasn't feeling well so she took some benadryl and passed out early but she gave us the cookie recipes for sugar and chocolate chip. we didn't actually have enough chocolate so when nina went with jay to pick up homer from somewhere she bought some hershey's bars. i learned that i am not actually terribly good at baking, we sort of added things in the wrong order and it was really hard but we (alex and i, tho ryan helped a little) managed to finally get something in the oven. the cookies did not actually stay very separate, they sort of all merged into one cookie. XD. but at least they tasted okay? i enjoyed the sugar cookies we made at least (which was not actually a separate batch, i was way too lazy to make both, so i just put like three cookies on the tray before adding chocolate chips. but yeah, i'll have to owe her some real cookies when i learn how to like, make real cookies.

but yeah after that and doing some laundry we basically crashed, tiring day.

SATURDAY
woke up aroound 10:15am, repacked my stuff so i only needed one bag to bring to canada, cleaned the dishes from the cookies the night before, then hopped in jay's car cause he was nice enough to drive us to the train station. i'm on the train to seattle right now, it's weird it's the first one i've been on that's only one story not two. they also have tv screens and are playing polar express atm. it's sort of annoying, their power outlets don't actually work so i can't charge my phone or my netbook, i'm glad that my netbook had enough power for me to actually get to this point~ kbye for now.

San Franciso - 3 Days

This is the San Franciso portion of my trip up north to Canada.

TUESDAY
woke up ridiculouslyyy early at 5:30am after like four hours of sleep. ate some waffles and veggie bacon, thennn everyone got over and we shoved ourselves and our luggage in my dad's minivan and off to the train station. we printed out like 30+ train tickets (cause of the various transfers and stuff XD) and then managed to get to the right place pretty quickly. sat next to sami on the bus to bakersfield and i played a lil bit of ds then listened to music while sami used my pillow to sleep on my lap then i used my pillow to sleep on hers. then we were basically there. it wasn't a long stopover and then we were on a more comfy train (same type as the amtrak i take from irvine to chatsworth a lot). i read a little bit, wrote like one post for souls and worked on nominating people for souls yearbook superlatives. then i slept a couple hours i think, listened to music or w/e, i don't remember too much of it so i must have been unconscious. XD. then we made it to oakland!

got our checked baggage, thenn walked some blocks through oakland to get to the BART (bay area rapid transit) which is like a subway thing. we were such noobs figuring out how to buy / use the tickets, but eventually we worked it out and even got on the right line. i think it went like, under the bay, which was weeeird. we took it from oakland to downtown san francisco, got off and started walking to the hotel. i'm not sure why anyone thought it was a good idea, but i was the one telling us which way we were supposed to go. so there was this amazing thing where we walked down one block and i was like "wait we should have been going the other way lol." so we turn around, walk back, and i'm like "wait i was j/k we want to go the other way" >_>. so we walked down this block like three times carrying luggage, i'm lucky they didn't kill me rofl.

but yeah we found the hotel, it was sooo tiny in terms of like.. horizontal space. o_O. sami and i stayed outside with the luggage while ryan and alex went to check us in (we said we only had three people with us). thenn we shoved ryan sami and i into the fucking SCARY tiny elevator (the door to it was like.. literally a wooden door with a handle, not like some fancy metal sliding thing) and made it up to our room on the fourth floor. our room was waaay cool, from our window you could see down the entire stretch of block downtown that we had walked down. and like, the place is called "hotel des artes" so there were funky things painted everywhere, super cool looking.

after getting settled (and of course, checking out the free wireless internet that the place offered) we tried to find a place to eat. ryan suggested indulging ourself with fancy expensive dinner because san fran is renowned for tasty tasty things, so i searched online and found out a hotel literally across the street had a good-sounding restaurant called "the roots" with some vegetarian and peanut-allergy-friendly stuff. it had very charming decorations and the food sounded rlly good. sami had an argula + goat cheese salad, ryan had a steak thing and alex and i split a cheese tasting platter, truffle oil + parmesan + garlic french fries and a fettucine dish with a crushed red pepper and tomato sauce. considering how picky i am, i was ridiculously and pleasantly surprised that i thoroughly enjoyed every part of that meal. it was SO GOOD. the waiter was really cute and amusing and we chatted with him a lot, and at the end he totally gave us an employee discount on the meal which saved us like $20. o_O. so we tipped him super nicely, haha.

after that we were going to walk to taco bell to get sami some more food because her salad while good wasn't amazingly filling, butttt the taco bell i totally swore was down this one street wasn't there, so we didn't find one and gave up. it was cold but dry, i wore my new warm weather jacket which has THUMBHOLES omg i love jackets with thumbholes, i was so excited when i realized it. but yeah so we just sort of wandered around the financial district of sacramento, looking at the awesome christmas decorations that were all over the place and taking lots of pictures. i got a gingerbread latte from starbucks, which was pleasing. XD. we got back around 10 or 11, i wandered around online a bit then showered and straightened my hair then went to sleep around 1130 or 12.

WEDNESDAY
alarms were set for 730, i didn't get up until like 810 after sami and alex had been awake and talking for a bit. it was rainy outside which was sorta disappointing for all the walking around we had planned, but we were like "eh whatever~" and i checked the weather and it was supposed to dry up by the end of the day. ryan went down to scout out free breakfast and brought back some stuff, i took a toasted bagel and cream cheese and got dressed + did makeup. decided to wear silly new beanie which is very blue. considered wearing scarf, but eh it wasn't cold enough to warrant it. checked out of the hotel but we left most of our luggage there behind the desk, very nice of them to let us.

we walked over to market street and caught a bus to haight and ashbury, where ryan really wanted to visit. it's basically this really hippy street corner that was huge in the 70s and where like the grateful dead, janis joplin, jimmy hendrix used to live. most things were closed when we got there at like 10:30ish but we walked around trying to find the grateful dead house first and by then more things were opened. we entered this one shop because it had like an amusing stoner's chess set with like pot leaves in the window and ryan wanted to know how much it was, and once we were inside we browsed a little. before we left ryan was like "o where is grateful dead's house btw?" and they told us and then also told us the store we were browsing actually was where jimmy hendrix used to live, lol. there were a few things ryan wanted to get but we went to another store first to shop comparatively. in this other store ryan got a t-shirt for his cousin. we stopped nextdoor briefly because it was a hat store! and there were some SEXY hats buttt they were waaay expensive, so i didn't get any.

we were a bit hungry afterwards so alex and ryan got paninis, sami stopped by grocery store and got stuff to make a sammich and I had a tomato/mozerella crepe. after that we proceeded to walk towards golden gate park, we had to walk through that to catch the bus up north to golden gate bridge. it's a GIGANTIC park. on the way from haight & ashbury we were literally offered pot like four times, it was highly amusing. the park was amazing, we stopped at this children's playground with this badass rope thing and spent some time climbing on that it was just way too much fun. mostly the rain had stopped by now, so just everything except the sky was getting us wet. walk through park might have even taken an hour or so, and we didn't even get through half of it it's that huge.

caught the bus and made it to the golden gate bridge. it was super foggy so we couldn't really see the bridge that clearly but it gave it a really cool atmosphere, and we could see it well enough to enjoy it. ryan had been there before, so he took us down this path towards the ocean where we could see it better and from there we went through this pretty garden to this concrete tunnel. eventually we ended up at this pier where a bunch of people were fishing and walked out there and chilled for a bit. we didn't stay long, it was prty cold and we were getting hungry again but it was nice to see. after that we had to walk to this other bus line. this was a LOT MORE of a challenge than the map we had made it look to be. cause see, there's this dotted line on the map. on the left side, one inch = 1.87 miles, on the right side, one inch = like .7 miles. up until golden gate bridge we were hanging out on the right side, but now we were on the left. we walked somewhere around 2 miles, much of it uphill and through paths through randomy brushy areas. it was actually really difficult because by this point our feet / legs were killing us (especially sami's.. she was wearing some not very comfortable boots D: ) and we were starving. and then at the end, to top it all off we had to run to catch the bus because it just pulled up to the stop a block or so in front of us. SO HARD. but yeah we caught it lol.

from there we went east to fisherman's wharf. ryan wanted clam chowder in a breadbowl so we went to this place his parents said had the best clam chowder and alex and him got breadbowls of it. it was right next to a boudin SF which was great cause i got some tomato soup from there in a breadbowl too. ryan, for the sake of science, got a cup of clam chowder from boudin as well but thought his first bowl was tastier. after that we browsed shops and i got little trinkets for my bro, dad, and mom. we stopped at in-and-out to get sami some dinner, thenn to ghiradelli square! i got myself some tasty chocolate covered raisins and got a couple presents for other people~ it was very pretty. we were sorta exhausted, so we decided to start heading back even if it was a bit earlier than we had to. took bus back, stopped at starbucks (got a gingerbread latte!), wells fargo (withdrew some $$), and got our luggage out from hotel des arts. thenn we made it out to the ferry building and found the little amtrak bus station. sami wanted to grab some food for the train, so ryan and alex watched our stuff and we walked to 7-11 and taco bell and got some snacks.

bus ride was short, it went over the bay bridge which made me antsy because long bridges over the ocean are sorta scary. train was a few minutes late but nothing major, we got on and got our seats and then most of us tried to sleep right away. i stayed up a bit eating crackers then tried to sleep, but it's really fucking hard when the person behind you is playing some sort of crime drama with lots of sirens and screaming and cursing on their laptop really loudly.. a conductor told him to put on headphones, but he just turned it down for a bit then turned it back up when the conductor was gone. :/. it was really annoying and kept waking me up, it bugged ryan (who i was sitting next to) too but neither of us wanted to say anything to him.

THURSDAY
my sleep was fairly interrupted by lots of things, but i still ended up doing best out of alex sami ryan and i. they weren't able to sleep like at all relatively. i probably got between 8-10 hours if you add up all the chunks. at some point i guess around 4:30am ryan went to go walk and look at the lounge car and he saw people sleeping there so he tried to sleep and did a little bit, but came back around 7:30 cos it was too cold. but during that time i stretched out over two seats and slept pretty solidly except for one point when sami left because there was a baby crying a few rows back and i was awake for like five minutes just listening to that, blah. that woke me up at one point around 10-11am too i think. but yeah, i did get a fair amount of sleep. at about 1pm i woke up for real and moved to the lounge car with big windows to snack and listen to music and write this journal thing. also so ryan could have the opportunity to sleep for a few hours with two seats to stretch out in, poor guy looked so exhausted. D:

but yeah, that is where i will end this part of the journal, it's about 2:15 now (yes i take forever to write these) and the train just pulled out of salem, oregon. we're gonna be in portland in less than two hours. ^^. i'm gonna eat some yogurt and maybe read or nap a bit more~