Our next big adventure.... Two years off work and backpacking the world!!!

We boarded our train on Thursday 24 th early afternoon and arrived in Oakland 8.40am Friday. Apart from not preparing ourselves for sleeping overnight it was a fantastic relaxing way to travel. The Starlite Train is double decker with 1 panorama viewing carriage. Our seats we had were comfortable with more than enough leg room to stretch right out for sleeping. We should have bought our pillow and sleeping bag to make our night more comfortable. Some areas we travelled in had amazing scenery. The view through the panorama windows increased the pleasure of the experience as you could look down on rivers, lakes, out over forests and snow-capped mountains and up at the sky. The highest elevation the train rose to was 770m. When we arrived in Oakland we had 30mins to pickup our backpacks and walk 1km to the Ferry Terminal to take us over to San Francisco or wait another 2 hours for the next ferry. The ferry trip took us to the bottom of Market Street where our accommodation was. We h...

Thursday morning 17 th May, we were on our way to Portland Oregon by train. It was about a 4-hour trip. I asked one of the staff at King Street Station what is the best side of the train to sit on. He suggested the right-hand side to see more of the water. It was a good choice. As we left Seattle we passed the Boeing factory and further down there were plane fuselages on trains. Something you don’t expect to see. Once out of the suburbs the train followed the Pugent Sound. There was nothing else between except water on our right and forest to our left. We passed what looked like Borneo where they have villages on the water. There was plenty of old derelict jetties and occasional wrecked boats to be seen. The shore was rocky with no sand. Sharon was fast a sleep and missed most of the scenery. In the brochures for Amtrak Trains I’m sure they have a picture of the train going through this area. You see the photo and say I want to see that. Of course, you can’t because a lot of adv...

We arrived in Seattle just after midnight on Monday 14 th May. I was up at 6.00am to have my first view of mainland USA. You are always told Seattle is overcast and raining. Our captain must have sailed to the wrong port. The day was warm with bright clear sky’s. You could see snow capped mountains to the NW and snow-covered Mt Rainer to the SE. The night before I saw the dorsal fin of an orca as we were sailing past Vancouver Island. You can choose to leave the ship between 6.30 and 8.00am by carrying off your own bags but we chose to go with the allocated time of 9.45am. That way we had time for breakfast and didn’t have to carry our bags through security. We scanned our sea-pass card when we left the ship picked up our bags in the terminal and just walked into Seattle. No one even looked at our passports. We found a cycleway/walkway that took us around the bay. It was a 5km walk to get us to “The Pensione B&B” where we stayed for 3 nights. There was some nice small park...

After an 8-day week because of the international date line we docked in Honolulu on the Island of Oahu at 8.00am on day 15. Everyone on the ship must be cleared through Immigration. With 5200 people on board you can imagine it is a long morning. The staff are cleared first, followed by passengers. If you have read my special addition Coddiwomple No.3 you would remember me mentioning the ESTA form for which we had to pay for and fill in before we can enter the USA. A few days before reaching Hawaii we all had to fill in an immigration form. It was an exact duplicate of the ESTA form questions. So, double the amount of paper work. I mentioned this to some USA citizens how inefficient it is and was told, for them to go to Australia it is exactly the same. We were all given a time based on our evacuation number to front up on deck 5 Sapphire Lounge for immigration inspection. We needed our Sea Pass card, Passport & immigration form. Our ESTA form was not even required. We went thr...

I love technology. Although I may not have grown up with it I have always been in awe of it ever since my trade first started using computer generated engraving back in 1981. My next words are about how technology has improved company’s efficiency and totally frustrated its customers and how you can be caught out by using it. When Sharon booked our flights back to Australia it was through Virgin. Then when Sharon tried to do online check-in she couldn’t through Virgin because our flights were booked through another company Air New Zealand. Tried to check-in online through Air New Zealand, the site didn’t want to know us. OK so we will check in at the airport. Get to the airport we did self-check-in you don’t have a choice. Typed in our booking number it doesn’t exist. Asked for help, found out we use our passports to check in. Go back to the machine that shows what page of the passport to use. Line it up on these green lights nothing happens. Sharon is now getting very annoyed, ...