Last weekend Justine and I headed 400 miles north to the city of Portland, Oregon for some rest and relaxation. We left early Thursday morning and returned late Sunday night, during our all too brief time in Portland we packed in the good times. Beyond Justine reserving a place to stay each night, we didn't do too much planning. We've found that scheduling a weekend full of events gets in the way of the actual adventure of traveling to a new town. Portland is known as a mecca for micro-brewers, craft distilleries, funky pubs, green living, and youth culture. We went into the weekend ready to have a good time and experience a new city.
On Thursday night, we had reservations at the Bluebird Guesthouse. The Guesthouse sits in the Division neighborhood of Southeast Portland. It's a bed and breakfast type house with 7 guest-rooms and a really friendly atmosphere. The Bluebird is pretty reasonable, we paid $60 for our room. It was super clean, well decorated and pretty centrally located for walking to pubs and shopping. You get a private room and share a bathroom with other people. It's your typical bed and breakfast set-up. I would recommend the Bluebird to anybody, even fussy people would find it inviting. We've found that to truly experience a city's unique culture you have to get away from the Holiday Inn's and Pizza Huts and head towards the businesses which are unique to each town.
After the 7 hour drive up from Eureka, we were ready to start having some fun and seeing the sites. We checked into our room, cleaned up, and fired up the laptop and found our fun for the evening. As I said earlier, Portland is known for it's pubs and micro-brewed beers. Early in the trip I decided that I wasn't going to drink the same beer twice and I was going to try beers that I couldn't find outside of Portland. We headed out for the evening and walked around the neighborhood. We popped into several great little pubs and sampled some really good beer. After pub hopping around the Division area of Portland for a little bit, window shopping and just kind of taking it all in...we were ready to grab some dinner. Now I love English pub food like meat pastries and sausages, so it was almost too good to be true that close to our lodging was an authentic British pub called the Horse Brass Pub. They have over 50 beers on tap and more British meat pastries than you can shake a stick at. The pub has an awesome ambience, it could have been straight out of an English neighborhood. It's decorated with dark woods and all kinds of memorabilia from the Empire. The pub is filled with happy people at little tables discussing life and laughing with good pints in hand. We munched on Scottish eggs (hard-boiled egg, wrapped in sausage, and deep fried), sausage rolls, and bridie pies (meat and onion popover smothered in mushrooms and gravy).
After dinner and pints we needed to walk off a full belly, so we set out into the night and towards our next adventure. Portland is full of old theaters and art houses. On our walk home we strolled by several theaters and finally Justine's curiosity got the best of her. She just had to have a look inside of one, so we walked up to the Bagdad theater and went on it. They were recording an artist interview with some guy named Ian Svenonius, I 'Googled' him when we got back to our room and apparently he was a pretty famous musician. We watched the tail end of the interview from the balcony and it was all I could do not to laugh at him. He seemed like one of the bigger dumb-asses I've ever had the privilage to observe from the balcony of an old theater. The high point came towards the end of the interview when he asked the interviewer why he hadn't asked him about the tube socks he had tied around his shins. I guess you might of had to be there to appreciate the absurdity of the situation.
Friday morning comes quick after a night of revelry and fun. The Bluebird Guesthouse had a sunny, open kitchen and a tasty continental breakfast of bagels and coffee. Justine and I enjoyed a leisurely breakfast and laughed at the events of the night before while we planned our day.
After breakfast, we put ourselves together and decided to head towards our next lodging and try for an early check in. We were staying at McMenamin's Kennedy School and we were pretty stoked to get there and see what was in store for us.
In the Pacific Northwest there are several great hotel/brewery/pub/theaters run by the McMenamin brothers. In the mid 1970's these two guys bought an old bar in Portland and revamped it into a unique family friendly, neighborhood brewpub. They kept going with the idea that a pub needed to be a fun, family friendly meeting place and began turning defunct buildings into brewpubs, hotels, and theaters. They focus on maintaining the history of the building and incorporate existing features into the landscape of the building.
We stayed at a McMenamin's in Bend last year and we've been hooked ever since. It's the business model that we'd eventually like to use to start our own brewery. The hotel we stayed in was formerly an elementary school, they used the existing structure and revamped it into a really unique place to hang out and stay. They managed to keep the flavor of the school by leaving the chalkboards in the rooms, naming rooms after the teachers that had taught there, and decorating the building with great paintings and old memorabilia from the school's history.
After checking into our room and drawing a quick penguin on the chalkboard, we headed towards the pub for a bit of lunch and planning. Our plan for the afternoon was to take the MAX train into downtown Portland and snoop around. Public transportation is a fun way to see a town and have a little adventure at the same time. It's also a good method for couples to work on their communication skills. Nothing brings out the teamwork like seeing a train approach and needing to figure out whether it's the right one or not. Portland has a really good public transportation system, it was way easier than San Francisco's or Chicago's to negotiate.
In downtown Portland we walked around, looked at some shops and went to Powell's Books. Powell's Books is a pretty famous bookstore, it puts every other bookstore I've ever been in to shame. It takes up a city block and its rooms are color coded so you don't get lost. I could wander around inside of Powell's for a day and not even scratch the surface. I ended up picking up a few hard to find books for future enjoyment.
Riding the MAX train around Portland and shopping made Justine and I ready to enjoy some leisure activities at McMenamins. We started our evening out by enjoying some pitchers and crab fondue over a movie at the theater inside the hotel. They had turned the old auditorium into a cushy movie theater that plays new movies each night. Instead of uncomfortable chairs, they filled the theater with overstuffed couches and recliners. The best part is that instead of the typical fare of popcorn and Skittles, I was able to munch on killer appetizers and swill good microbrew during the movie. The movie was 'Nick and Nora's Infinite Playlist'.
After the movie we headed towards the 'Boiler Room', which was a three story pub inside the hotel that featured pool tables and tons of other games. Justine and I opted to shoot pool for a while and just kind of enjoy the whole atmosphere. The pubs within the hotel are open to the public and serve as gathering place for families that live in the neighborhood. It's great to be around people who are active and having fun, sometimes living in Humboldt County gets a little tiring. The night ended with a long soak in the outside soaking pool.
On Saturday we headed to the Oregon Zoo to check out some animals. I can never turn down a trip to the zoo, I guess it's just ingrained in me. The Oregon Zoo was great, it's probably the coolest zoo I've been to yet. The exhibits are huge, but somehow the animals were always right next to the glass. We ended up spending the whole afternoon at the zoo, walking around and enjoying the festive atmosphere.
One of the many great exhibits was a lorikeet cage that you could walk through. For a buck you could get a cup of nectar that the lorikeets go absolutely bonkers for. As soon as the birds notice that you have a little white cup in your hand they swoop in a start to lap at the nectar. Justine was the bird whisperer, at one point she had four or five birds fighting for her attention.
I love penguins. This little guy stood there and stared at us for a while. I think he knew that I was a big fan of his.
On Saturday night, we stayed at the Northwest International Hostel in downtown Portland. It seems like there is a certain stigma about staying at hostels among people who haven't ever stayed at one. They are usually great places to stay. We always get a private room and it's usually a third of what it would cost to stay at a hotel. They are clean and unique, the difference between a private room at a hostel and a hotel room is that at hostels you might have to share a bathroom with another person and you don't get a TV or iron in your room.
After we checked into our room at the hostel and got our bearings, we set out to find some grub and head towards the Holiday Ale festival. We were hoping to spend a couple hours at the festival and then head to a bluegrass concert that we heard about from some friends. On the way to the festival we stopped at Henry's Tavern for some grub. Henry's Tavern is one of Portland's most famous watering holes. We were pretty surprised at how great it was. They brag about their Happy Hour deals and they have every right to brag. Each day they make a Happy Hour menu, it features gourmet food for really cheap. For example...crab cakes were $3, orange chicken $4, burgers were $5, and soup was $1. It was really great food too! Needless to say, we stuffed ourselves on killer grub and pints. After dinner we walked to Pioneer Square for the festival, I guess the rest of the city had the same idea. The line to get into the festival wrapped around the entire city block. Justine and I got in line and prepared to wait. After a few minutes in line, we had had enough. We didn't come to Portland to stand in line! We rationalized leaving the line with the knowledge that Portland is a town of microbrews. You could walk into any pub in town and find beers that you won't find anywhere else, besides, we had tickets to a kick-ass bluegrass show.
We headed towards the venue, The Doug Fir Lounge. The Lounge is a really cool venue, it has the feel of a huge log cabin. There are fireplaces everywhere inside and outside in the courtyard there are fireplaces which encourage people to gather around them and shoot the breeze.
Trampled by Turtles and Hobo Nephews of Uncle Frank were the two bluegrass bands we saw play. They were really good. Hobo Nephews was more of a rocking bluegrass, while Trampled by Turtles was more of a traditional bluegrass sound. I would definitely go out of my way to see both bands play again.
After the show it was late and we were tired, we didn't feel like walking back to our hostel, so we figured we'd try to catch a bus back. Earlier I said that catching public transportation in a new town is a team building, well catching public transportation at night when you're tired is a team building exercise in spades. As usual Justine and I figured it out and made our way back to the hostel and our nice comfy bed.
After a solid breakfast on Sunday morning and little walk around the neighborhood, we started our drive back to Eureka. Seven hours later we were back home and already reminiscing about the weekend. Looking back on our little trip to Portland, I can honestly say that Portland is one of the best cities I've been able to visit. If it were closer to the beach I would definitely move there. The city is clean, the infrastructure is great, the people were friendly and I don't know if you'd ever run out of stuff to do.
Do you want to visit Portland and see some places that we saw? Here are some links to check out and plan your own trip...
The next several weeks are going to go pretty quick, our time in Humboldt County is winding down. We've been here for almost 2 1/2 years and this place holds some pretty good memories. There have been great hikes, camping trips, surf spots, and the culture. We've been living and working out here, but it feels like the honeymoon is in full swing. This winter is going to bring some changes...There's going to be a new town, house, and fun stuff to do.
