A few weeks ago my pal, Stacey, came into town for a few days en route to her brother's wedding. She wanted to go down to Portland to see what there is to see and my friend Michelle and I were on board.
The morning we headed out we drove down the Columbia River Gorge west to Portland. I think the Gorge is just beautiful with the river slicing through. And it was the greenest I've ever seen because everything was starting to grow and hadn't been burned by sun and lack of water yet. We stopped at Multnomah Falls which is like 20 miles outside Portland. It's a little bit of PNW heaven. You can see the falls from the highway but I've only gotten out like one other time to actually check it out. Plus, it's like visiting a National Park or something to me, mostly because it's green and has trees. See, when you grow up in the desert anything that has green and trees feels like camping. The falls were pretty and we saw it from a few viewpoints. I thought the mile hike to the top of the falls would be doable, but halfway though 11 switchbacks I was super sweaty and out of breath. We chalked the failure up to being inside all winter and not getting back in shape yet. Another time!
After our half-hike we drove into Portland and had lunch at a place I've been wanting to try ever since I heard about it. It's called The Waffle Window-they make sweet and savory waffles. And yes, it's heavenly. We each got a sweet and a savory and it was worth it. I had black forest ham with greyere cheese and then banana, nutella, whipped cream and chocolate sauce. Oh baby!
A note on Portland: if you've never been let me just tell you it's just as you'd picture it. A ton of hippies sporting dreadlocks and risking their necks just to ride their bicycles through town. Just in the 40 minutes we were at the waffle window I spotted three retro vans. Yep. Keep Portland weird.
After lunch we went up to the Pittock Mansion on top of the hill outside downtown. It was built in the early 1900's by Henry Pittock who was the publisher of The Oregonian, a newspaper. It was cool to look at all the "modern" inventions of the time and learn about the local history. The house wasn't nearly as big as George Eastman's in Rochester (which I toured last year) but I thought it was a good effort for being built on the frontier. My favorite room was probably the breakfast room, it had fun blue/purple wallpaper and a huge window that looks down over the city. You can see Mt Hood in one direction and Mt St Helens in another direction. After the tour we walked the grounds to take in the great views and saw some beautiful trees in bloom.
Then we drove back down the hill to try out the Japanese garden only to find out that it wasn't free and didn't know if what was inside was worth it. We toured the Rose Garden which is across the street but nothing was blooming yet. I kept telling Michelle and Stacey, "It's so pretty when it's in bloom!" They just had to imagine it.
Driving back across the Willamette Michelle asked Stacey what hotel she had booked for us. Stacey said it was the Doubletree by Hilton. I thought for a minute, wait a second....That's the cookie hotel!!!!!! We stayed at a Doubletree when Jillian got married. They give you a warm cookie when you check into the hotel. Seriously, they have this drawer at the check in desk that keeps the cookies warm and they are actually really good. My life is blessed.
We chilled for awhile and tried to figure out what we wanted to do that evening. What ended up happening is that we rode the light rail into downtown (worked so well!) and tried a place called Mother's Bistro. The concept being that things on the menu are things your mom would make, only posh-er. I got chicken and dumplings and shared that and homemade mac & cheese with Stacey. I liked the dumplings but was a little disappointed when the mac & cheese wasn't the cheesey bread crumb goodness I was expecting. But the atmosphere was cool, I like how it was decorated, and it wasn't too loud. (Holy cow I am old if I can't handle a restaurant being loud!). After dinner it was raining so I suggested Powell's Bookstore. Powell's is one of my most favorite places in the entire world. It's an entire city block of a bookstore; they have every book you could think of, new and used. I kept getting lost because they have various levels and stairs that lead to more rooms of books. I told Michelle and Stacey to have fun and went to hunt down a few things. Pretty much every book I was looking for was there, plus a few more. And, bonus, no sales tax in Oregon. Booyah! So after picking what I needed I found Michelle and Stacey in the spiritualism section looking up how to interpret dreams and also how to interpret the color of your aura. Seriously, it's Portland. After a stop in a city Target (The escalators supposedly can carry shopping carts) we rode the light rail back to our hotel for the night.
The next day we explored the Northwest neighborhood. I had found a french boulangerie & patiserie on a tourism website and knew it would be worth trying. It was heavenly. The St Honore Boulangerie. You walk in and the smell of bread baking hits you first. One wall has loaves of bread and rolls and there are several cases full of pastries. Legit stuff too, none of this imitation stuff. It was so pretty. I bought a few pain au chocolate for the parentals, a strawberry tarte for mom, apricot tarte for me, and a loaf of french bread. They were all soooooo delicious and a big hit. I wish I had gotten more. Both my friends got paninis for lunch and said it was some of the best food they'd ever had. I can't wait to take my mom there someday.
After that, we were supposedly near some shopping neighborhood so we decided to see what we could find. For awhile it wasn't that great. We found a hippie store that sold all things buddah, krishna, incense, meditation etc. Again, Keep Portland Weird. It was raining again so we were about to give up. We took a detour to look at some of the really cute houses and the blooming trees. An ice cream store someone told me to try was nearby so we hit that up. Salt and Straw. It was the hippie version of ice cream. About half their menu had these strange combos like pear and blue cheese, or strawberry and basalmic oil. It also had other flavors like Lucky Charms, almond chocolate ganache, and snickerdoodle. It was a fun place. We decided to keep going and eventually found some better stores. I visited a legit haberdashery for the first time, it was cool. It had a station at the counter where you can choose which feather you want on your hat. I like hats every once in awhile but these were too rich for my blood, I also found a fancy paper/stationary store that was fun. They had uber fancy paper that was so pretty, and scrapbooking supplies. (side note: my dad said it sounded like some kind of store they would have in Queen Anne Hill {a neighborhood in Seattle} and I looked it up and they have one like two blocks from the fabric store my mom likes to visit each time we go). It was fun looking at the pretty stores.
Then Stacey and Michelle drove me to downtown so I could go see a ballet documentary that I had found out was playing there. By chance, reading through the entertainment section of the paper I noticed it was playing in Portland, actually right across the street from Powell's. I never thought I'd be able to see it as something like that would never show up in the TC, seriously, so blessed. Hahaha, yeah. Anyway, the documentary is called Ballet 422 and follows a young choreographer named Justin Peck. Justin is my age and not only is he a dancer for the New York City Ballet he has been named as only the second in history to the post of Choreographer in Residence. The documentary follows him as he choreographs NYCB's 422nd ballet. It was really interesting to watch and I totally nerded out on the ballet stuff. A criticism I do have is that they never interview Justin or ask him about his thoughts or process. It literally just follows him as he works on the ballet. So I guess that was the movie maker's choice. I did like at the end how you see Justin watch his premiere at the NYCB and then the camera follows him backstage to see him get ready to dance himself in the next ballet. I liked it a lot. And Michelle and Stacey were super sweet to let me go see it even if they themselves weren't interested. They did find the Portland street market and had some interesting experiences there.
Then we walked around downtown for awhile and tried to find one of the famous food trucks that would tempt us. I ended up getting this fancy turkey/grilled cheese sandwich, it was pretty good.
After that we drove home to the TC! It was a fun trip with my peeps. Portland definitely has it's own vibe/flavor for sure. I think it's residents would be a little more cheerful if they got more sun than they do. I enjoyed what I did and found a few new favorites to visit if/when I go back.
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