Portland; Wednesday, 27 March, 2024

I’d stayed over at an airport hotel the night before so that I could have a relaxed start to the morning. After checking out of the hotel I headed over to the airport and checked in for my flight. Given I’d left lots of time, and had been close to the airport overnight it of course all went incredibly smoothly and less than 5 minutes after arriving at the airport I was already in the lounge.

I headed over to the gate about an hour before our scheduled departure time at which point I found that boarding was just about to start, which again felt rather too smooth.

The flight ended up pushing back about 10 minutes late because a neighbouring plane was pushing back at the same time, but that didn’t appear to make much difference as, after a smooth flight, we landed in Portland a good 10 minutes early.

A very quick journey through the airport – which was even more of a surprise as I had both a new passport and a new ESTA which meant I had to go through the full photo and finger print control, but was through in just a couple of minutes, well ahead of my bag that came round about 10 minutes later.

Stright through customs and, due to building works, onto a bus to be driven round to the front of the terminal where it was a lengthy walk down to the MAX station, but I got there with a couple of minutes to spare before the next tram into town departed and 45 minutes later, at not even 7pm local time (2am the following day as my body was feeling) I was checking into my hotel and heading up to the room.

7pm felt a little early to be going to bed, even if I had been up for over 19 hours by now and had had an afternoon that lasted the best part of 12 hours, so instead I unpacked and headed down to the hotel bar for a quick sample of a local brew – Portland being relatively famous for it’s craft beers.

With a quick nightcap inside me I decided that 8pm (3am) was an acceptable time to throw in the towel and head up to bed.