Port Townsend, Washington

So unusual to have blazing hot sunshine in the UK, as seen here from an Air Canada flight, but I left all that to go to the... Well, not so hot and very cloudy Pacific northwest, though today promises to be better.

Am in Port Townsend, a little town on the Puget Sound that thought it was going to be a big deal, back about a hundred plus years ago, so they built a bunch of big houses for the hotshots and... It didn't happen here. The railway went elsewhere and now the whole downtown (which I've yet to see in daylight) is on the National Historic Register.

We're in the Washington Street Hotel, in a suite of three rooms, and the beds are unbelievably comfortable, so that, after 26 hours awake yesterday I fell into a dreamy coma last night...

On a complete side note, in one of those bizarre random things life throws at you, the man sitting next to me on the London to Vancouver flight was the great-grandson of the man who built the house I live in - how mad is that?!

OK, so a travel tip: if you fly to Vancouver and are catching a connecting flight to the USA? Give yourself PLENTY of time. There are three –  count them, three – border stop points that entail long lines: first to check your boarding pass, then to check your baggage, then to check your passport.

I assumed I'd missed my connection, but - phew! - did not (see pic of the San Juan Islands from the little prop plane I flew down in) and was met by old friends at Seattle-Tacoma airport for an amazing drive full of talk all the way here for another (the second) of our college-friend reunions. However, often I see these people, I never tire of them and all I can say is, there is nothing better than finding your herd again after being separated for years. I would write more, but have three different people talking to me and can't concentrate. let the fun continue!