2012/08/14: Coast Starlight

Coast Starlight is the name of the Amtrak train running between Seattle and Los Angeles. I was travelling on the southern part of this line in 2008. Yesterday we travelled along the northern part, starting in Seattle and finishing about 24 hours and almost 1,000 miles later in San Jose.
Before the train left Seattle, we had time to explore the Pioneer Square area, Seattle’s oldest district.

From here you can look at the city’s skyline.

The trip onboard the Coast Starlight started at Seattle’s wonderful King Street Station.

Between Tacoma and Olympia, the train runs near Henderson Bay.

In Portland, our train had a service stop of more than one hour, so we could take a walk through “America’s cycling capital”. Public art shows that Portland tries to be an ecological friendly city:

We walked through Old Town…

…and Chinatown.

After having climbed one of Portland’s many bridges…

… we continued our trip in Amtrak’s comfortable Superliner cars.

In the evening the train went through the Cascade Mountains, trees and lakes accompanied us for hours.

Woken up this morning, we saw the first hills of California.

From San Jose, the commuter train “Caltrain”….

brought us through the famous “Silicon Valley”…

to San Francisco.