In less than two weeks I was able to double the number of US States I’ve meaningfully visited, by hopping on and off the California Zephyr.
Gallery: Chicago to the San Francisco Bay, by train
Arguably Amtrak’s most scenic route, the California Zephyr allows a great variety of landscapes to be sampled from the comfort of a lounge or sleeper car. Here’s some of what I experienced during a winter run with the snow often piled high!
Chicago to the San Francisco Bay, by train
I took on the entire 52 hour, 2400 mile journey from Chicago to Emeryville on the California Zephyr – but rather than one epic ride, I split it into six pieces across nine days. Here’s how those went.
Gallery: Chicago 2022
An assortment of architectural highlights from January’s two visits to Chicago.
Chicago: City of Architecture
Despite the cold of a midwestern winter, I was able to check out a number of Chicago’s architectural highlights.
Gallery: Seattle 2018
Collecting together most of the photos from our time in Seattle – including some from general wandering not covered in other posts.
Seattle Museum of Flight and the Jet Blast Bash
A visit to Seattle’s Museum of Flight not only ticked another Concorde off my list, but gave me a chance to hear about something even faster, thanks to a talk by SR-71 pilot Brian Shul.
The Seattle cityPASS
Visiting a variety pack of tourist attractions in Seattle via the cityPASS scheme.
The Arctic Club Seattle and our Hotelosaur project
Our final hotel for the trip went above and beyond in meeting an unusual special request…
Oregon Rail
To get to Portland, Eugene and back to Seattle we used both of Amtrak’s rail services in the area: the Coast Starlight and Cascades.
Gallery: Eugene street art
Our visit to Eugene coincided with the downtown visual arts festival, which included the addition of fresh murals to the 20×21 project. We set out to find some of those, plus other pieces of street art around the city.
Eugene, Oregon
A destination included on a whim turned out to be one of the highlights of our trip!
A tour of the Columbia River gorge and Mt. Hood
Discovering some of Oregon’s beautiful scenery by guided tour.
Portland (and the Kimpton Hotel Vintage)
We spent much of our time in Portland hiding from the heat in our hotel room; thanks to a remarkable upgrade, we had a lot of room to hide in.
Local Seattle
With plenty of time to explore Seattle – twice – during this holiday, we were able to appreciate a few different neighbourhoods that offered a more relaxed pace than the city centre – and even a taste of local life.
Cascadia 2018
An overview of the upcoming posts, sketching out the shape of our travels to Seattle, Portland, Eugene and Seattle once more.
Gallery: New York
Assorted sightseeing in Brooklyn and Manhattan.
Four nights in… New York
A work trip for a conference in Times Square gave me the chance at a longer visit to New York, which I split across two hotels and a variety of attractions. I also got to add an iconic BA experience to my list: flying Club World on the upper deck of a 747.
My North American Travel Bucketlist Tour 2015
An overview and links to coverage of my trip to New York, Vancouver, Seattle and Los Angeles via a mix of international business class flights and long distance trains.
Gallery: Vancouver to Los Angeles by train
The photographic version of my rail journey along the west coast.