We went to Portland! & made a scrapbook

Every time Brenden & I take a trip, we collect coasters, postcards, airplane tickets, maps, menus, anything that is scrap book worthy.  Then we take it home with the intention of printing out all the pictures and gluing everything together in a cutesy little scrapbook.  But, unless we do it right away, the tidbits just sit in a box for years....

This time I wanted to do it differently. I went on to pinterest and started looking for road trip journals.  After seeing a few different options that involved sewing and binding, I saw some that involved my favorite option, a hole punch and some string. Done! So easy.  I took scraps of paper left over from our christmas cards, punched holes, tied it together and BOOM! 5 minutes, road trip journal. Shoved the journal in a bag with a glue stick, hole punch, and pen.  Above is the end result.  A mixture of different things that we collected and some notes about the day.  I really liked writing about the day because it included little things that we would probably forget down the line.

We went to Portland!: part 111

^restaurant on the left, strip club on the right, shared bathroom in the middle^

The final installment to "We Went to Portland!" During our last day in Portland we didn't know what to do.  All we wanted to do was eat and drink, but we knew we should probably see a little more.

First, we went to Rocky Butte park and tried to overlook the city and the mountains through the clouds.  Brenden was the photographer during our time at the park and as you can see I was quite the model.

After the overlook, we decided to take the plunge and wait in line at Voodoo Donuts. Although to be fair, we went to Voodoo Donuts Too so the line may have been shorter than at the original location.  Brenden had two Portland cremes and I had a bacon maple bar and a marshall mathers.  The donuts were good, very creative but I don't know that they are worth the crazy long line. After dounts, we drove out to Beaverton to check out the hometown of Nike.  We didn't really like Beaverton.

Back in Portland, we drove through Washington Park, watched the train, and took many pictures of all the greenery.  Brenden was running all over a hill taking pictures of the zoo liner.  He loves trains.

Lets get to the good stuff.  After the park, Brenden and I went to lunch at Santeria. This restaurant had good reviews on Yelp, so I didn't really read the reviews I just looked at the star rating and kind of glanced at them. So, we get to the restaurant and the sassy waitress tells us there are tables in the front or back but don't sit on the four top and walks away. We sat down ordered drinks and waited 20 minutes for water. Let me get to the point;  the service is crappy, and the food is good for where it is. But that is not the interesting part. This restaurant shares a bathroom with a strip club. You walk through a swinging door to get to the bathroom, and you may walk into a full nude strip show. We were sitting next to the swinging door and did not realize that we were right next to a strip club for quite a while.  As soon as we did realize, it became a treat to watch people go through the door.  One guy walked through, apologized, came out and asked us what to do..."what do i do? Do I just go in there? Is that really..? Okay...." We didn't say one word.  Brenden and I both took turns going to the bathroom.  He went during a shift change and I went during "Get your freak on" where a girl in a neon green bikini was working it for one client.

After Santeria we went to Bailey's Taproom and realized Santeria will serve you anywhere! The people eating in the bar got better service than we did in their own restaurant.  But, Bailey's Taproom was nice. They only serve beer so Brenden really enjoyed it.

For our final event in Portland, we went to the Driftwood Room which is located in our hotel. This is where Brenden had a second sampler; a fine tasting of local whiskeys. The Driftwood Room is a retro little lounge that has fancy drinks and friendly bartenders.

That's the end of our vacation! We really enjoyed Portland.  It was cold when it was overcast but beautiful when the sun was out.  The food is delicious, the drinks are creative and the people are friendly.

We went to Portland!: part 11

After we spent our first day driving along the Columbia River, we decided to spend our second day exploring more of Portland.  We started off by going to the Saturday Market, which was great. But, we were hungry and we don't really like trinkets so we wandered right through and out. We did spend some time exploring old town and found the homeless/homeless by choice population. During our wandering, we also found some of the famous signs that you see whenever you google Portland. Also, we walked by Voodoo Donuts several times and each time the line got longer and longer. Even in rain.

After our morning exploring old town Portland, we went back to the hotel so Brenden could run.  Now, I'd like to take a moment to talk about the amazing bed. The beds at the Hotel Deluxe are wonderful fluffy clouds. Every morning, we chose to sleep in just a little longer so we could enjoy that bed.

After Brenden went running, we decided to eat, drink and experience some Portland rain. We went to a couple different bars in old town, and it rained the whole time but it wasn't so bad. It was nice to be chilly for a little while.

We went to Portland!: part 1

^ bird books^

We went to Portland! The day after all of our family left, we packed up for our weekend trip to Portland.  We had such a great time.  90% of our time in Portland was spent eating and we didn't even get to half of the restaurants on our list.  The food is amazing!!!!

On to the trip...Our trip actually did not start off so well. My ticket was booked in my married name while my picture idea was in my maiden name.  Luckily we had gotten to the airport early so we were able to get that sorted out. Then, we found out while they changed my name, they also changed our seats and would not change them back. Anyway, we figured that problem out too and then we realized we both forgot our rain jackets. And of course, it rained almost the entire time we were there.

We spent our first full day in Portland driving out to Multnomah Falls and Hood River. It was gorgeous  out there! I have missed the forest and the mountains so much. We must have 100 photos from that hike alone, Brenden was a fan too. We hiked to the top of Multnomah falls and half way up we had lunch with some sandwiches we had picked up from Bunk Sandwiches.  They were so good! We were raving about them for the rest of the day.

After our hike, we checked out the kite surfers on the Hood River and then headed back to Portland.  We went to Powell's Books and saw the massive bird book aisle.  We were missing our bird identifiers just a little bit. After, we had dinner at Deschutes and we highly recommend the brewery pretzel.  All of the food was delicious, but that pretzel, it was amazing. Deschutes was also where Brenden had his first sampler of the trip. After Deschutes, we finished off the night at Ringler's Annex  so that Brenden could have a Pineapple Jalapeno Margarita. We had shared one the night before and he was jonesing for another one.