80 Days in America

This morning I slept in a bit, because I didn’t set the alarm clock. I was so tired last night that I thought it would be a good idea to get some extra sleep. Around 10.30am I woke up and drove again for a bit. In the next small town I suddenly saw a big sign with ‘Pancakes’ on it, that seemed like a good idea for breakfast to me. It was a great idea, I had a superdelicious pancake with strawberries and whipped cream. I enjoyed breakfast, updated the blog and did some e-mails for work. Around noon I went back on the roads again, with Portland as the destination of today.

After about an hour driving I said goodbye to the beaches, because I was heading more inland to Portland now. The landscape changed a lot, no big woods or beautiful beaches anymore, but large farm fields. During the ride I listened on the radio to Barack Obama’s speech with his plans to create more jobs and help the economy. It was interesting to listen to, I think he has some great plans, I hope he can work them out too. If you’re interested, I think you can soon read more about it at the blog of a Dutch friend of mine, Raymond Mens, who is also in America for a couple of months for his study. After a little less than two more hours I arrived in Portland. I found a parking spot in the centre of the city and parked my car there for a couple of hours. While I was walking through the city I realized something about myself. The last few days a said a couple of times that I’m not a real camper, but now I realized that I really had a hard time to switch to the city life again after many days in nature. It wasn’t until I was sitting in a Ben&Jerry’s ice cream store that I could find the benefits of the city. It just are two worlds apart and I like both, but I think I do more like the nature, which was a nice surprise. You get to know yourself better during traveling.

In the evening I parked next to the Mc Donalds and Applebees and because I already had way to much fastfood in the last days, I decided to eat at Applebees, which turned out to be a really nice restaurant. I ate some nice Italian food and then I was surprised by a live musician that started to play piano and sing all kind of songs the rest of the night. He also played requests, so I asked him to play one of my favorites ‘New York, New York‘ and it really made me miss New York again. Portland today was ok, but after a couple of hours I had seen the most things and I didn’t found it really exciting. New York on the other hand… The city that never sleeps, I felt home there. Before I leave America again in about two months, I definitely want to spend some more days in the Big Apple.

I spend the rest of the night till after midnight at the Applebees, enjoying the music. Around midnight when the musician was done playing he said to me “Hey Netherlands, wanne join our table for a bit before you leave?” So I did and we talked about traveling and photography, because his friends was a photographer too. I had a lovely time and didn’t went home (read: my parked car around the corner) until I was really tired. Although I had to get used to being in a city again today, I had a great night. 🙂