Extrait de [ http://westernUSATrip.abondon.com jour 5]

Day 5 : 9/25/01 

So today was more of a resting day.

First we woke up very very late ... 9:30! Then we had to do some laundry, some email and we finaly left at 12:00 sharp.

We woke up with a nice little rain that reminded us of a winter in Britanny (france) or a summer in England :)

So we drove up to Portland,OR and spend the day there. Portland is a very very nice town. Nothing compared to what you can find in the Bay area. It looks very clean, very friendly and people seems to enjoy living there.

We had the address of the information center and made it there ... only to realize that it was no longer even there, but finaly found another one.

In the meantime we had to park in a parking. There was a nice view from the parking on a nice red building and I wanted to take a picture of. Unfortunatly a security guard asked us what we were doing there and kind of showed us the way out of the building.

So we then went to the information center. It is sooo refreshing and so nice to first have people speaking english in public places (oups that was mean) and then to have friendly passionate people telling you what's nice to do in their town.

So we went to take the town scenic walk we were recommended but on the way it started raining pretty bad. It was so funny seeing all those people wearing T-shirts while it was raining. It was just as if they didn't even noticed and that they didn't care, most of them didn't have any rain clothes. They probably really are used to that. However in the late afternoon, when it started raining bad, some umbrellas showed up and it seemed that they actually noticed it was a little humid there ...

So as I said, Portland is a very nice town even if it rained. It must be great to live there in the summer when the weather is nice.

There're some coffeeshops everywhere and little terrasse that must be real nice when the sun shines. But today we just had rain and we cut short our scenic walk when we started beeing to wet to continue. When we went back to the parking, I finally took the picture of the building I couldn't take earlier and ... this same guy was there again!!!! But this time I got my piture!! Then he kind of followed us to the car and made sure we were really leaving!

So after a quick view at the Rose garden arena (the Blazers' home stadium) we just drove to Kelso,WA to spend the night. We wanted to go to Mt St Helen tomorrow but the weather will be bad. So maybe we'll do Seattle and come back thursday when the weather should be nicer for one day!

By the way our excursion to Canada looks like it's not going to happen as the security has been increased at the border and lanes are incredibly long to get back into the States.

In addition to this Hertz wanted us to change car to get there and we are not even sure that we are allowed to come back on our visa (as we do not work anymore).