Gosh, we've been quite bad at keeping you all up to date - but it's all because we've been having such a great time so forgive us :)

The train journey was fantastic. 48 hours on a train sounds bad, but the seats were for XXL people and had so much leg room I couldn't even reach the next seat! There was a dining cart, and the train stopped every so often for people to have a smoke and stretch their legs. It was really a good way of travelling a serious distance, 2216 miles in all, and I'd do it again. The only issue was no Wifi, which is odd seeing as both planes and buses can manage it these days - but beggars can't be choosers! We also managed to finish all the Terminator movies, and Season 1 of Father Ted! The time really flew and before we knew it, we'd got to Seattle.

We were quite relieved (and so was everyone else) when we got to our hostel in Seattle and got a shower as it was more than 72 hours since we had our last shower (the water didn't work in the Chicago hostel on our last day!). A funky hostel, it had crazy murals in each room - and all the staff were 'hip' artists. Ours was of owls.

The next day we spent a wonderful day with Kerice from Seattle, a girl we met on Christmas last year who was a friend of Tom Scott. She showed us around some superb tourist places - my personal favourite being the Bank of America tower - and then fed and beered us in the evening with her friends Randall, Carolyn and Stephanie. Hopefully the photos show what a brilliant day we had.

We followed that up with a quiet day in Seattle, just getting our bearings and planning our next few steps (a price you have to pay when you don't plan everything in advance). Our biggest decision was that we'd spend Christmas with my Aunt Audrey.

To get to the town where Audrey lived (Fort Langley just south of Vancouver, it's lovely), we spent a total of $2. Kerice was off to see friends in Bellingham, so we got a lift there. We then got the local bus to Blaine and walked from there over the border. After a very simple questioning process (Do you like hockey eh? How aboot a beer...) we were let through and met David in Canada who gave us a lift to the Dunn compound.

Now Fi is going to take over....