Portland; Monday, 01 April, 2024

I woke up just before 8am to a message from my flight tracking app to say that my flight home was going to be heavily delayed, and a quick check online revealed that rather than already being in the air heading to Portland the plane forming my flight was still on the ground in Heathrow with a 3 hour delay on it’s departure. So with that I had a lengthy breakfast and then checked out of the hotel for my final couple of hours in the city.

I caught the bus up into the hills above the city to the Oregan State University Hospital, not to visit the ER, but instead to head over to their viewing platform and Aerial Tramway. From up here the views over the city are some of the best, and on a really clear day there were views to both Mount Hood and Mount St Helen’s at the same time. I spent quite a bit of time taking in the views before heading over to the cable car to take it down to the riverside.

The journey down takes just about 3 minutes, and it’s a popular attraction with lots of people paying for a round trip, which helps to make it free to use for anyone who is actually a patient.

At the lower station I hopped onto the streetcar back in towards town, hopping off at the Portland State University campus to grab lunch in a restaurant there before continuing on the tram up into Chinatown.

My final stop of my trip was to the Lan Su Chinese Gardens. I had wandered past these on Thursday, when it was drizzling, but decided at the time to skip them then and I was quite glad I’d made that decision as in the warm sunshine with clear blue skies the gardens and traditional buildings were spectacular. I spent quite a bit of time wandering around the space, stopping for a pot of tea in the traditional Chinese Tea House.

Just as I was about to leave I received the second unwelcome app message of the day when my credit card bleeped to let me know the hotel had just decided to help themselves to almost $700. Given I was already heading back to the hotel to collect my luggage I kept the alert on the screen to query, given the bill I’d received on checkout had only been $130.

Back at the hotel it turned out that there had been a problem confirming the pre-payment between BA Holidays and the Hotel. The Hotel claimed they had been trying to reach out to BA the whole time I had been staying with no luck, and therefore they had to charge my card and I’d have to seek a refund. Thankfully before I left BA sent me a text with an emergency contact number and I was able to get through to an agent in a couple of minutes who was able to resolve the issue – the speed with which he was able to identify and fix the issue made me think the hotel was probably at fault and hadn’t been as proactive as they had claimed.

With everything sorted I grabbed my luggage and headed out to the airport for my long wait and even longer journey back home.