Last week, I was just going about my normal business of work, school, and sleep when I happened to take a glance at my little used iCal. Much to my surprised, I saw January 19th highlighted in red with big bold letters proclaiming "NO WORK!!!" I don't know exactly how a three day weekend escaped my notice--generally I'm counting down the days until a no work day like they're Christmas--but I didn't question it, instead I just fired off an email to Colby (Who was stuck in Korea with a broken down airplane, and probably off gallivanting about Seoul at the time. It is so hard to be him.) to inform him that we were taking a vacation. To Portland.
You see, as we near the end of our time here in Washington (I hope and pray), I have suddenly realized how very much there is to do around here that we keep talking about and never doing. I visited Portland for a day once with my parents, but Colby had never been and I knew that there was so much left to do there, and since it's a two hour drive away, it seemed like the obvious choice.
So, I hopped on TripAdvisor and Hotels.com, made some reservations, got the dogs booked in a kennel at the vet, and started counting down the days in earnest. We decided to wake up early on Saturday and drive down to the city to meet our Epicurian Excursion walking tour by 9:45. The tour was a great way to kick off our trip, as it managed to combine breakfast, lunch, and an introduction to the city all in one fell swoop. It sort of set the theme for the rest of the weekend: Eating and Making (Good Natured) Fun of Hippies. You see, the one unifying theme of all the restaurants we visited were the following traits: Fresh, Local, Organic, Sustainable, and Seasonal. These are all wonderful attributes that make for some seriously delicious food, but it was also seriously hysterical how fervent these restaurant owners were about being the MOST sustainable or the MOST organic. I don't know, maybe you had to be there, but it was really funny to us. Particularly when they detailed exactly how much garbage they threw away per week. That's great and all, but seriously, just give me some beer!
However, that was not nearly as hilarious as the time the lady at the culinary school described the wine she was pouring for us as "an explosion in her mouth." My eyes nearly bugged out of my head, and I tried my damndest to hold it in, but finally I turned my beet red face to Colby and mouthed the inevitable, "That's what she said! That's what she said!!!!" And then we both snort laughed in an embarrassing manner. And that is why we love each other.
After the food tour we headed off to my Mecca: Powell's Books. This place is just... intense. It was just room after room with every available wall and floorspace covered in bookshelves and crammed with books. After I had wandered through in awe for a couple of hours, I had to sit and sift through the books that I had been stuffing into my basket in a frenzy. I left with a long list of books I want to buy, including The Road and The Executioner's Song, but only allowed myself to walk out with four new books: A Lion Among Men: Volume III in The Wicked Years, The Red Tent, The Painted Kiss, and Why Do Pirates Love Parrots? Because really, why do they? (Don't tell me!)
Following Powell's, we braved the blustery wind that had begun whipping and headed off to check into our hotel, the wonderful Hotel Monaco. This is an extremely pet friendly hotel, and it was all I could do to not hurl myself at every passing puppy. Colby wondered how much they must spend on carpet cleaning solution, and I must say, whatever amount they spend is absolutely worth every penny, because we could not smell a single bit of pet odor. In fact, I may even go so far as to say it was the best smelling, cleanest hotel I've ever experienced. Dinner that night was at the delicious Mother's Bistro & Bar, just a couple blocks away from our centrally located hotel, and we liked it so much, we headed back for an even more delectable brunch on Sunday morning.
Sunday we spent expanding our cultural horizons at the Porland Art Museum and Colby explained to me why exactly electricity costs money at the Oregon Museum of Science and Industry. Plus I got to shoot off a bottle rocket and experience an earthquake in the same day I gazed upon a Degas and a Monet. I just love museums! That night we decided to just go with our affinity for maternally named restaurants and I had a wonderful gnocchi and tiramisu at the Mamma Mia Trattoria.
Monday morning we packed up our bags and headed out for our last day of the Porland experience. We had breakfast at Bijou Cafe, picked up some coffee for our parents at Stumptown Coffee (check the mail, y'all!), then made our way to Chinatown to visit the Chinese Gardens. I had visited the Japanese Gardens in Portland with my mom in September, and I was struck by how different the two experiences were. I am by no mean an expert in Asian gardening, but just based on these two experiences, it seems that the Japanese garden was much more forcused on actual plants and what you would think of as a "garden environment" with ponds and rocks and statuary, while the Chinese garden was much more architectural, with its focus on providing a serene, tranquil environment for scholarly pursuits or philosophical conversation.
Well, philosophical conversation AND making faces at ceramic Chinese dragons.
From there we headed over to Grant Park so that I could hang out with Ramona Quimby and Henry Huggins at the Beverly Cleary sculpture garden. Our last stop was The Grotto, a gorgeous outdoor Catholic shrine and botanical garden run by the Order of Friar Servants of Mary, then we bid a fond adieu to the Rose City. We stopped by the Mount St Helens visitors center on the way back home, but it was closed for the holiday, so Colby just snapped a few photos before we went back on our merry way.
Check this out:
The mountain. Now you see it, now you don't!
I plan on debuting this amazing feat of magicry before a live audience at Spring Break. If you can't be there, look for it to be featured in the 2009 edition of the immensely popular Girls With Low Self Esteem, coming to a Hollywood Video near you!
So, all in all, Portland was a really fun experience, made almost more so by the rather spontaneous nature of the trip. We didn't really plan a whole lot, and didn't give ourselves any specific schedule to stick to, so I didn't come home feeling like I needed a vacation from my vacation. We're working on a list of things we still want to do here before the end of the year, and stay tuned Twilight fans, because I'm lobbying hard for a summer visit to Forks and LaPush.
