We Brake for Wild Boars ;)

apologies for lack of updates

Gareth — Wed, 24 Oct 2007 07:06:01 +0000

Sorry for the lack of updates, these weeks have been really hectic, so we had to sacrifice some time used for blogging
In the mean time we were kicked out of blogrush network… it seems we weren’t active enough. Well… we will have to switch to a micro blogging style, splitting the days in more post. It could be easier to read for you and easier to write for us. Let’s have a try and let’s hope blogrush let us in again

In the mean time, have fun, wherever you are.

Technorati Tags: blogging, blogrush

4.From Portland to Florence(OR) 3rd August 2007

Gareth — Sun, 14 Oct 2007 12:06:40 +0000

Starting from this post i will try to add a google maps of the road. Let’s see… Perfect! Thanks google!
View Larger Map

It was the last day in portland, so we dediced to do a bit of Shopping, but first we did the breakfast at “Peet’s Coffee & Tea” : that’s really a nice place to have breakfast. Less Informal than Starbucks but very elegant. Our Shoppin spree involved many shops but most of the time we were at Abercrombie & Fitch (Gareth was astonished to find that he could wear “L” sized trousers. In Europe he is considered “XL” sized.). Remember: there are no sales taxes in Oregon, so buy buy buy !

Gareth note: i should have bought myself a Nintendo DS lite! Darn!

We had to visit a friend of a friend of Ines in the suburbs (i know, that’s a rather thin contact), but she wasn’t in her home when we went, so we headed toward the coast! After some miles we reached Cape Meares, near Tillamook (see the map). We had another meting with the Ocean after the sunny days of Seattle…and boy we were chilled No, really chilled, the weather was cloudy and the water was really cold.

More photos here!

It was funny to walk over the sand with our bare foots, Gareth even tried to enter the water… Sometimes when you try to look too cool, you end up looking a fool (proof here)

Well, it was nearly lunch time so we returned to tillamook where we refilled the car and asked informations about meal.

We were directed to “Mc Claskey’s Restaurant“. We had a fantastic lunch with lot of fish and then we had one big surprise: the desserts. The Waitress instead of a list of dessert, showed us the whole inventory. Of course we were not used to USA oversized portions, so we received one big plate of sweets each… Boy, we were stuffed! And the bill was low, we paid maybe 9 euros each. That’s maybe 12 dollars ? Amazing!

Toward Yaquina

Near Newport, we decided to stop at the lighthouse of Yaquina Bay. The Lighthouse is still active, albeit fully automatic, but there are guided visits inside (for free! uzzah!). The day was… perfectly foggy! After an exhaustive visit we went south some more to Florence, where we booked one giant sized bedroom for all of us in a motel called “silver sands”… Next step “The sands“… but that’s another story

Technorati Tags: oregon, tillamook, lighthouse, meares, desserts, florence, newport

3. From Timbuktu to Portland, Maine. Or Portland, Oregon, for that matter…

Gareth — Sun, 07 Oct 2007 18:02:18 +0000

On day 3 we had our first (well at least for Elena and me was the first) pancake experience… I don’t know… Maybe it was because of the polistirene boxes they used as dishes or maybe because the place itself looked like a polistirene box (we managed to choose the ugliest place to have breakfast in in a 1.5 Miles radius… ), but the thing tasted… well… like polistirene!
After that, “well fed and happy”, we headed to the Stadium, walking all the way through downtown Seattle.
Now, I’m not a soccer fan so I can’t do a comparison with the typical italian stadium, but this one looked really huge to me and really well maintained.
Then we left Seattle… With lots of things unfulfilled I must say, but that’s how life goes isn’t it?
Next stop on our trip plan: Portland, the City of Roses, as they call it.
On the way there, in the middle of Nowhere, WA we had a tasty taco at a Taco del Mar restaurant and we had our first tour into a Wal Mart…
Yes! They have huge supermarkets in the middle of nowhere!
In Canavese, Piedmont, we just have green fields full of cows, sheeps, Heidi, Petar and good old Nebbia, the dog… But after all Canavese IS the middle of nowhere!
Ok, enough with the digression…
We entered this Wal Mart and we started walking around like dogs in search of a nice hydrant or a tree.
A Wal Mart is pretty much like Wonderland for a group of Silly Italians you know?

“Get away from them! They don’t speak english!”

But just like Alice, we had our personal encounter with that Wal Mart version of the Red Queen, i.e. a fat (and when I say fat I really really really mean FAT) mother who, hearing us blabbering in italian, grabbed her little blonde arian girl and pulled her away from us, yelling: get away from them! They don’t speak English!

How sweet!

Well, it was pratically the only episode of “discrimination” we found during the travel. Except that woman, all the other people recognized immediatly our nationality and was eager to learn more about us..

Anyway we reached Portland during the late afternoon… which is always a big mistake, because you end up stuck in the traffic. After a bit we arrived in downtown and started looking for an internet point in order to get some informations about lodgings in portland. Gareth noticed that the city had a free wireless network (of course he started browsing internet and sending photos with his cellphone)! But in order to get some real info we had to resort to the Public library, where you can have one hour of free internet! That’s one amazing service for the clueless tourist. In the end we reserved 2 rooms in a motel 6 outside Portland.

Of course we were ready to look for a restaurant in the evening, so we went back to Portland, but it was already too late for Usa standards (about 9). We went to Chinatown, only to find everything closed and at some point we pledged our destiny to the GPS… unfortunately we didn’t find anything open so we returned at the motel and bought some junk at macdonalds.

The following morning, Gareth fled early from his room and went exploring the neighborood, where
he found a little supermarket! he bought myself a box of fruit… but that’s the start of another story Stay Tuned!

Technorati Tags: walmart, portland, metro wifi, taco del mar, chinatown, motel 6

2. Seattle by day and night

Gareth — Tue, 18 Sep 2007 23:25:02 +0000

Previously… on 31th July 2007…

On day 2 of our trip we started having a “continental breakfast” at the Red Roof Inn… Nothing special actually, but enough to satisfy our appetite… well at least for a couple of hours…
After that we jumped on our Toyota and we went to downtown Seattle, where we enjoyed a little ride on the monorail and we had our first encounter with a mall…
Needles to say I was shocked by the prices…
Everything was so cheap I almost fainted!
(Just a little sidenote: If you’re visiting Oregon BUY, BUY, BUY! Don’t wait to go somewhere else to do it since there’s no sales tax in this wonderful State!)

Then we went to Pike Place Market, a pleasantly noisy and colorful market just near the sea, were we had a nice lunch on the pier. The restaurant was called “the fishermans” at the pier 57 and it was a fantastic meal. After the lunch we headed toward the Science Fiction Musem and the EMP (experience Music Project), which are on the same building (and you can buy a combo ticket to visit both).

Consider at least 4 hours for the EMP and 1 for the Science Fiction Museum.

It was a great afternoon, but we had to skip some stands inside the EMP because we were late. If you love music, there a lot of memorabilias and a funny “music room” were you can test your musical attitude: there are interactive stands where you can learn percussions, strings and vocals. We also visited the Science Fiction Museum, but it’s not very big: ok, there are some awesome original costumes from various movies a huge ALIEN queen… but not much more.

During the evening we booked a room in a motel 6 and at then we went on the Space Needle to catch some night scenes of Seattle. It was worth the cold wind, because some of the pictures taken by Alessandro are truly Amazing. Check on the Flickr Page regarding the day.

Stay tuned for more

1. Once more with feelings

Gareth — Mon, 17 Sep 2007 11:10:18 +0000

Ok, let’s try to do a nice summary of our vacation, day by day. We will try to post as many hints and directions as possible in order to share our “vacation know-how” with you.
My thanks goes to Elena, which wrote the main parts of the events on her diary

30 July 07

Our vacation started early on the morning of the 30th of july, probably the longest day of my entire life. My brain and my body disagree on the exact duration, but it was fun nonetheless.
We started at about 4 in the morning, collecting everybody on our rented car: the flight started from Milan (we live about 150 km West) at 9, so we need to get there really early. It was a good move, because we found almost no one on the check-in queue and we were soon going to have a breakfast. Our Flight company was KLM and were bound to do 3 steps:

Milan to Amsterdam
Amsterdam to Minneapolis
Minneapolis to Seattle

Everything went smooth (even at amsterdam the gate authorities asked us lots of questions, but everything was nice and people were polite) except in Minneapolis. Some of us was held after the document check and was questioned. I think that the guy which was questioning me was a bit too rude but Giovanni was almost accused of being there for illicit activities. We know the difference beetween strict and paranoid and that officer was a bit too much on the wrong side of life. We had to wait nearly 15 minutes for Giovanni, but in the end everything went well and we entered the main section of the airport.

First steps on usa land

We had to wait nearly 2 hours for the last trip, so we took a stroll inside the airport. Me and Maxx were ready to taste the vacation…so we bought a burrito. Each. We were exposed to the lower cost of food which is peculiar of the USA: the burritos were much larger compared to those we are used to eat in italy. Of course they were delicious! We were also amazed to see a statue of Snoopy and an ipod vending machine!

Seattle here we come

The rest of the travel was good and at the airport of seattle we rented the sturdy car which brought us to san Diego: a Toyota Sierra. (here the first picture near the AVIS parking). Of course we rented also a GPS (a Garmin, can’t remember the model)… which was non functional until we got out of the parking. After some wrong turns (Alessandro was driving and even though he is an awesome driver we did a couple of wrong turns before arriving the Inn).

Red roofs inn

This was our first stop: we had 3 bedrooms, with 2 queen beds each, near the airport.

The rooms in the USA are, generally speaking, HUGE compared to our european standards

. Each Queen bed can hold a couple of people. We tried to find a place were to eat a sneak and drink a beer, but everybody was tired and freezing (there were some chilly gusts of wind) so while Nanni, Elena, Ines and Alessandro went to bed, me and max went to… Denny’s! The results were… 2 amazing plates (picture) ! it was a very good start

subscribed to blogrush

Gareth — Sun, 16 Sep 2007 23:20:06 +0000

i’ve joined the blogrush service, in order to link similar blogs and exchange exposure. It’s still brand new as service, but i’m quite sure it will work beautifully!

Stay tuned for updates!

Coming soon…

Enne — Tue, 11 Sep 2007 08:54:26 +0000

…the Bagnacaoda’s Guide to the West Coast!

It’s not that we pretend to know everything about USA now, but we can give a few suggestions to those who want to travel like we did ;P

Stay tuned!

Posted by youtube

Gareth — Sat, 25 Aug 2007 08:35:19 +0000

milano to seattle (Seattle0.mp4) for August 01, 2007, 07:08 PM

slideshow with music. This is a little experiment i did during the first days, it seems that the “post to video” function of youtube is finally working

gimme some food dude!

Gareth — Sun, 19 Aug 2007 08:19:22 +0000

gimme some food dude!, originally uploaded by garettojaksu. – uploaded on : 19 Aug ’07, 10.19am CEST PST

Little beggar on the big sur! Squirrels are abundant in the usa.:)

end of the road

Gareth — Sun, 19 Aug 2007 08:16:55 +0000

end of the road, originally uploaded by garettojaksu. – uploaded on : 19 Aug ’07, 10.16am CEST PST

No more usa available, please try later.