Day 32 - The day after the Spruce Goose visit, we had a free day to spend in Portland, and had booked into an apartment hotel in SW King Street. We had stayed the previous night in Tigand after the museum visit , a suburb outside Portland, as it was getting too late to go into the city and find a place ( nothing worse than driving in a strange city, not knowing where to go and not knowing the layout), so landed at a local Best Western and pre-booked some accommodation.
There had been two recommendations given by our friends CR and Jeanette in Denver - one was Powell's Bookshop which is a huge second hand and new bookshop , and Portland grill which has stunning views of the city.
So we arrived at our Hotel and left the car & luggage there & went exploring. First stop was Powell's Bookshop and oh my what a book lover's dream ! The Bookshop covers a whole city block , and is three levels. Each level is colour coded to it's subject matter so things are easy to find. Well needless to say I spent a few happy hours there and Deb also managed an hour before the Siren call of design shops lured her out.
Deb had booked us in to the Portland Grill at 6pm, so after partly sating myself at Powell's , we headed back to the Hotel , checked in properly , freshened up and went out.
The Portland grill is a stunning place. It's on level 30 of one of the city's few high rises and as we had a clear night , the views of the city were amazing. The food was delicious , although I found out that 16oz of Steak is bigger than it sounds!
We were able to walk to both bookshop and restaurant as both are along one of the main streets , West Burnside , so both could be reached easily, however the surroundings we walked through were less than salubrious ! The odd wino , some adult shops ( with risqué displays) mixed with some trendy cafe's and the odd jaguar dealership gave the place an odd feel , almost like a certain amount of gentrification was going on.
Day 33 - Our last day in the U.S.A. We had a few hours to kill before needing to be at the Airport , so it was back to Powell's for some really really last minute book buys before finally packing up and heading to the Airport, following the directions of our GPS who has provided sterling service this trip and never put a foot wrong.... if GPS can have feet.
We decided to arrive with plenty of time in hand, and so had a wine and meal at one of the local eateries and then waited for the plane to arrive.
Well, from there the wheels fell off. The plane was due to arrive at 3pm, depart at 3:30pm so we could catch our Air NZ Flight from Vancouver to Auckland , arriving Sunday morning ( and then Auckland - Wellington) . An announcement was made that due to a technical fault , the aircraft was not leaving Vancouver at all and had to be replaced. There were a dozen or so people that had connecting flights ( London, Auckland) and naturally we all tried to get some information about what we could do. Unfortunately the staff were few and unable to help in any way. At one point only one staff member was available , and she got snaffled by some business class customer for about an hour, and when one other person turned up, they could offer no real information or assistance. We had even tried calling Air NZ direct and Deb (while on hold to a 1-888 number ) was scanning webjet to see if we had any other options at all.
The only real option we had was to go to Vancouver anyway , then try to get a flight to Sydney directly , as that was ultimately our end goal ( Deb had to be in Sydney Monday morning for an implementation!), so when the plane finally turned up ( at 5pm) we got on and headed off to our unscheduled stop over in Canada. It was with a palpable 'Hmph' that as we landed at Vancouver airport , we taxied past the Air NZ plane on it's way out to take off - missed by that much!
So after we landed , we then had to figure out how to get to Sydney , as there was no way we were getting to Auckland at all. There were no Air Canada staff when we exited the plane, but we eventually ended up at the information desk where they were expecting us. We explained our predicament ( read , I ( Joe) acted like a drama queen until I eventually calmed down!) and they were able to get us allocated seats on an Air Canada flight direct to Sydney - leaving at 11pm Saturday night and arriving late Monday morning !!
In the meantime, we have been given vouchers for a hotel right on the airport itself (and it's very posh) and some meals ( thought the $15 per person allocation got swallowed up pretty quick , that would barely have paid for a soup!)
So tomorrow we will be up at the crack of dawn to go down to the Air Canada desk , get booked and checked in, and then we have several long hours to kill until our flight boards at 10:30pm.
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