Portland Trip

Wow, it's been awhile since I've been on here. Thanks to Chrissy for keeping this thing updated as well as doing the 2010 year in review post. Although she says she doesn't want to do another blog again cause it takes way to much time. I was going through my pictures the other day and I noticed that I had pictures of our trip to Portland OR. I completely forgot that I was going to post these. So here goes:

Being three hours south of us, we have always wanted to visit Portland. We thought we would have by now, especially since my good friend and old roommate Mark Mirocha lives down there with his wonderful girlfriend Lydia. So pretty much one day we said we're just going to go down there that weekend. Turns out, however, that Mark & Lydia were back in St. Paul visiting family that weekend. So we instead had to show ourselves around this great town of theirs. Portland is a lot like Seattle in ways, but is still it's own very distinct city that is like no other in the world. And I think they pride themselves on that. There is nothing that I can specifically describe to help paint the picture, but it just has a different feel to it. Maybe it was all of the street food vendor stands (aka Street Meat Stands). I'm not just talking like 5-10 or 20, I'm talking like literally 100 stands. There where multiple city square blocks that were completely devoted to vendor food. It was crazy. We even stumbled upon a Weekend market that is actually pretty huge. It was also great cause it was right down by the water under the bridge connecting East and West Portland.

PS, Chrissy does not like the picture on the right. She says it looks washed and she can't stop staring at the man with the long hair... Anyways, we ended up staying at a place called the Ace Hotel. The market themselves as a hotel for hipsters. And that it was, but actually in a cool way. It was like an old dormitory made into a hotel. The rooms were small, cheap and wonderful in a minimalist way. There were only the bare necessities, which was actually all we needed. The floor had to share a bathroom, however it was never a problem. It was a very cool atmosphere with people hanging out in the lounge, drinking coffee, reading the paper or casually chattin with one another.

We decided to wander our way around the city and neighborhood. there was a lot of really cool buildings and churches.

We even stumbled across mark and Lydia's place!

That night we decided to visit the local pubs and brewery's. We stopped the Rogue Brewery Beers where we had a 6 pack sampler platter and Beer Cheese bread to dip in our Beer Cheese soup. That's heaven right there. Chrissy was even drinking beer! We then went to the Deschutes Brewery and meet Jim at the bar, a Portland local who told us everything we needed to know about Portland and beer. However he knows absolutely nothing about hard alcohol. Per his suggestions we went to Life of Ryan which is a lounge-ish bar upstairs and a basement part downstairs. They had cheap beer and free pool, darts and shuffleboard. Thanks Ryan! On our travels around the city we stumbled upon the infamous VooDoo Donuts. They are world famous for their crazy concoctions and delightful delectables. They are also unfortunately famous for having a ridiculously long line, whether it's 1pm or 1am. We stopped multiple times and had just about every cereal possible, on our donuts.

Sunday morning we grabbed some more donuts and headed over for a delicious breakfast at a random greasy spoon corner restaurant. Across the street was some fantastically talented street art. I love seeing this in the city!

Though we were only there for two days, we got to experience a lot. However there is still a tremendous amount of things we need to see and do. Therefore we will be going back there soon. Thanks Portland, we'll be in touch!