Have you every planned a journey really badly? I certainly planned this one really, really badly. The plan was to go to Portland, Vancouver and San Francisco. But due to ridiculously more expensive single flights, I decided to fly to San Francisco, stay a night, and then fly  to Portland from there. Well that was a bit of a nightmare.

But let’s start from the beginning. I left Germany around 10am, and after a brief layover in Copenhagen, entered the 11 hour flight to SF. It was alright but the flight gave me a headache, and I was exhausted by the time I landed. But the nightmare only started there.

I thought staying a night in a hotel hear the airport would be best – well it’s not. The hotel was SO shitty and noisy that I spontaneously left and booked one in the city center of SF instead. I wanted to go there anyway to buy a SIM card, so why even bother staying near the airport? Getting there  and away from there was already a challenge, because there was no taxi coming and I eventually just booked a lyft instead.

Anyway, I made it to the city eventually and checked into the nice hotel. I also went out to get a SIM and to a supermarket, and eventually dropped dead into bed at 8pm.

The next morning I already had to go to the airport again, and absolutely didn’t feel like it. I really should have just stayed another day in SF instead. Stupid.

This time I took BART to the airport, and it was all a bit tight, but I made it to the gate 5mins before boarding! Around lunch time I arrived in Portland, Oregon. My first impression was “meh”, and honestly it stayed the same throughout my visit there. It’s probably a cool city to live, but I was shocked by the astounding number of homeless camping on the sidewalks. You really need to watch where you’re going here…

I walked around the campus and along the river a lot, which was pretty nice.

Ich bin über den Campus gelaufen, und dann am Fluss entlang, das war zumindest ganz schön.

On my second day in Portland, I woke up rather early and took a Rideshare bike to the city forest. I went for a really nice hike there and the weather was actually perfect and sunny (which is a rare case in the temperate rainforest). Nature here is really amazing.

After the hike, I relaxed a bit in the hotel, and afterwards went for a walk in the hipster neighborhood. Lots of cool shops and restaurants here.

On my third day,  I went on a guided bus tour that I booked very spontaneously, as the weather didn’t look too promising this day. The tour was actually much better and more educational than I expected, because the tour guide had a focus on “eco” and told us a lot about the downsides of how human society affects pretty much everything in Oregon nature.

The tour took us to several famous waterfalls, an amazing overlook of the Columbia River Gorge, to a dam that has a fish ladder for salmon, and we also tried to go up to Mount Hood, but it was too snowy at some point.

Especially regarding the salmon, it was sad to hear that 200 years ago the river was so thick with salmon that you could walk on them, but these days they need to breed them in hatcheries to get enough for a sustainable population. This tour really made me want to see all of this landscape as it was 200-500 years ago, completely untouched by white men, and in harmony with the indigenous population.

Day 4 was a travel day to my most anticipated destination: Vancouver! I’ve been wanting to go here for such a long time, mostly because I’m a huge nerd and watch a ton of shows that are filmed here. And really, everywhere you go you can probably find a little something you’ve seen in a movie or on TV before.

The weather was unusually nice, even though it’s freaking cold up here (comparatively… for Canada it’s pretty warm).

I decided to make the most of the sun and walked around Stanley Park. It really does look like Fillory.

On Day 5, the first thing I did was buy a new jacket that is windproof and a bit warmer than all I brought, as well as a (fairly cheap) hat. It’s frickin’ cold here.

Then I walked about town, checking out some of the sights like the steam clock, the Chinese gardens, Granville Island and it’s cool markets, and the northern shore area south of the inner city.

Day 6, and in the morning I booked a nerdy walking tour from Fans of Vancouver. To my surprise, it was a personal tour, just me and the tour guide (because of Corona), and it was very cool. He showed me a lot of filming locations from all kinds of stuff like Deadpool, Arrow, The Flash, Lucifer, 50 Shades of Grey, and a whole bunch of others, and he talked about the shows I really like a bit as well (such as The Magicians). He also showed me the Marine Building, an amazingly beautiful building that appeared in lots of movies and that I probably never would have noticed otherwise.

In the afternoon I went to the Capilano Suspension Bridge Park, which was nice but honestly annoying and underwhelming. It was soooo full of annoying tourists that I literally got a migraine. It was also all fenced off, whereas actual trails would have been way more interesting.

Anyway, I went back to the B&B after that and just relaxed to recover from the migraine.

On Day 7, I went to the UBC campus. Here it is! Brakebills! (From The Magicians) Or also, Belgrave, from The Order, which I started watching on my vacation on my phone, and which I’m actually enjoying greatly because it’s nerdy, doesn’t take itself seriously (like Buffy), and was filmed in Vancouver as well.

There is also a theater building that appeared a lot of The 4400, and I think in Fringe and a few other shows. And as far as I can tell, some scenes of Legion were also filmed on this campus.

It was sadly a bit rainy, but I still greatly enjoyed walking around this campus. I’m always amazed at how awesome non-German campuses are. They’re basically small towns, and studying here seems like it would be so much fun.

On campus was also the Museum of Anthropology, which was also very nice.

After I was done with this campus, I drove to a huge shopping mall in Burnaby and walked around there a bit. There was a really cool exhibition of animal sculptures made from trash found in the ocean there.

The weather was unfortunately very unsuitable for outdoor activities today. Well, this area is a rainforest for a reason.

On Day 8 I had a bit of a stressful morning, because I had to go take a Covid Test in order to be let back into the US – and there is literally only one single test center in Vancouver that does travel tests. And they are insanely expensive – 55 CAD for a quick test…

From there, I had to dash to Waterfront, where I booked a bus to the Sea to Sky Gondola. Unfortunately this trip was very badly thought out, because I did not expect there to be this amount of snow and I was wearing the wrong shoes.

While the views up there are beautiful, I couldn’t really do any of the real hikes. Even though I rented overboots, it was still slippery as hell as soon as there was a bit of an incline. So after about an hour or two, I decided to take the gondola back down, and found another nice little trail down there, and then took the earlier bus back to town.

I didn’t really do anything else the rest of the day, I was too exhausted from my time here.

I think I need to pace my trip better, and book a hotel with a bathtub, so I can recover better from all the walking.

This was my last day in Vancouver – I really, really like the city, but at times it was freakin’ cold, and really should have done this trip in summer. Eventually I think I will visit Vancouver again, that time with a better idea of when to come, and what to do when. And I still have plenty of interesting locations all over town I want to check out.

Day 9 was a travel day. Nothing interesting to report. Took train to airport, sat around, went on plane, flew two hours to San Francisco, was picked up by my partner (who arrived at his family’s a few days before), stuck in traffic for like an hour and a half, and finally arrived at the family’s place. I think we ordered Mexican for dinner after the kids were in bed.

Since the weather was supposed to be really nice today (unlike the day before), I wanted to go to San Francisco. My partner joined me and together we walked 13km through Union, the Presidio (where the Yoda fountain is next to the Lucasfilm headquarters) and then along the shore to Fisherman’s Wharf (tourist hell) and Embarcadero.

Day 10 we spent the morning shopping at Target, played, and I went for a walk at the beach.

On Day 11 we got ready to leave for our next destination. It was I think a 3 hour drive to our little cottage in the middle of nowhere, but it was actually really nice to relax there when we arrived. But we got pretty strong “America” vibes out there in the back country… Jesus/Trump is everywhere…

We drove an hour and a half into Yosemite National Park to see the famous Yosemite Valley and attempt some trails there. We chose the Upper Yosemite Falls trail, which eventually was my downfall… we definitely didn’t have enough water for such a challenging trail, and we didn’t have the right shoes. After about 500m elevation gain and about 2 hours, my legs were shaking so much that I couldn’t continue the last (very, very steep) 30-40 minutes it would have taken us to reach the top. Maybe with more water it wouldn’t have been a problem. Well we were noobs. And then we had to go all the way down again…

On Day 12 the weather forecast for Yosemite Valley was kinda crappy, so we started the day with a short trail at the Wawona Swinging Bridge. It was awesome because there were almost no people at all anywhere! We kept our eyes peeled for bears, but didn’t see any. Our legs were still VERY painful from yesterday’s hike.

The trail took us through a lot of burned forests (as did the drives throughout all the parks), and it was kinda interesting, but also a bit sad to see.

Afterwards, we decided to drive to Yosemite Valley again after all and maybe try the Mirror Lake trail (a very easy one), but it was too rainy, cold and uncomfortable. So after taking a few pictures of the valley covered in clouds, we drove back to our cottage (another hour and a half through winding mountain roads).

On Day 13, we went to see trees! Very big trees!

First we checked out of our cute cottage and drove south to King’s Canyon National Park and Sequoia National Park. Our first stop was Grant Grove, which has one of the largest trees in the parks.

From there, we originally wanted to go into King’s Canyon, but sadly the road to it was still closed for winter… so a ranger recommended us to go to Hume Lake and walk the trail around the lake, which was very nice.

From there, we drove south on the most hole-y road ever, and stopped at General Sherman, another one of the biggest trees in the parks.

Walking up there was actually pretty exhausting, not only because our legs still hurt from trying to climb the falls, but also because the air is very thin up there at 2100m elevation.

But damn, these trees are fascinating! You could live in there!

After that day full of activities, we arrived at our next accommodation, which turned out to be a bit of a nightmare – the room had an incline and the bed stood at an angle, making sleeping rather annoying. But worse than that, it smelled horribly of piss. Thanks to all of that, I barely slept.

Already very soon after arrival I suggested that we end our trip to the parks early and go back to Berkeley tomorrow already, not only to get away from that horrible room, but also because the forecast for tomorrow afternoon was rain, snow and unsuitable for further explorations of Sequoia National Park. Thankfully I was able to book another night for the hotel in Berkeley for tomorrow already.

Day 14 would be our last day in the parks, as was decided yesterday. The forecast for the morning was still good, so we drove into the park and went to the Marble Falls trail (after a brief stop at Lake Kawea, which was on the way).

This trail was a bit challenging at times, but infinitely easier than Upper Yosemite Falls, and also infinitely emptier – we have a total of 5 or 6 people on the entire trail.

After that we were very tired and exhausted, especially since on the way back we were hurrying a bit to get back to the car before the storm was supposed to arrive.

We stopped at a restaurant just outside the park, and then started the long drive to Berkeley. It was 4 hours of driving straight ahead, through orange plantations left and right as far as the eye can see…

Day 15, my partner made plans with his brother to play a board game, and I wanted to go back into San Francisco to check out some areas that I visited 15 years ago and wanted to revisit. I really enjoyed the walk in Haight-Ashbury, contrary to my expectations (15 years ago it was a bit creepy there). The area is full of really fun shops. There’s a vintage shop for every decade…

From there, I took at lyft to “The OA House”, which wasn’t so impressive because the sun was on the wrong side. But wow, the little park next to it gives you an absolutely amazing view over the city! From there, I walked to the City Light Bookstore, where I spent many hours 15 years ago, and which is still delightfully weird. I continued to Chinatown and the Embarcadero, and then took the BART to Berkeley, where we had the most amazing Indian Food ever with the family.

Day 16 was our very last day… we met my partner’s family for breakfast at an amazing breakfast restaurant just one street from our hotel in the morning.

After breakfast, we said our goodbyes and we went for a walk to UC Berkeley campus. I was curious to go there again to see what I missed (I was supposed to do research here in 2020…).

To our surprise, it was actually CalDay, a big fair for prospective students. There were lots of booths and cool things everywhere!

Towards noon, we walked back to the hotel, picked up our luggage, and started the very long journey home… Over an hour on the BART to the airport, then waiting around there, then on the plane to Copenhagen (the bastards reassigned our seats and we were stuck in the middle seats for 10 hours!), then more waiting, then another our or so to Düsseldorf…