I've been itching for a vacation lately and there are only a couple places that I can fly direct to in the winter time. One of those places is Portland with about a 3.5 hour flight. I've never been anywhere in the NW so I thought this was a perfect place for a weekend getaway! And my friend Katie from Texas, who now lives in Denver, met me there.
My first impression of Portland is that it's a super clean city. Obviously its eco-friendly but it was refreshingly clean and beautifully green. Driving was a little scary because not only are there lots of one-way streets, but many of them have only one lane for cars and the rest are for the bus, the train, and bikes. After some troubles and a couple loops around the block, we finally arrived to our hotel in downtown Portland! Katie travels a ton for work and has the Diamond status at Hilton so when we checked in, we were upgraded to a suite on the 22nd floor with great views of the city. However, when we walked into the suite, we noticed there was a wide open attached door to a mega suite that gave us 360 views of the city! We had a living room, dining room, bar, 2 bedrooms, 3 bathrooms, a mega closet, etc. you get the picture. We thought surely there was a mistake, but we enjoyed our sweet "suite" life as we got ready and pumped up the music on the speakers.
We visited the Dechutes Brewery in town for a delicious dinner and some flights of beer. Portland is a foodies dream with such delicious food, food carts, and microbreweries. So I think it's safe to say we successfully ate our way through Portland. At Dechutes, I had the Obsidian Stout mac and cheese with prosciutto and Katie had the quinoa cashew avocado burger. Both were definite winners and paired delighfully with our flights of beer. I'm pretty sure I can get this beer in Alaska so I made note of my favorites: Chainbreaker White IPA, Red Chair NWPA, and the Double Impact Belgian IPA. We also headed over to Henry's Tavern where they had a ton of other Oregon and Washington beers on tap. I had another good find there as well - Boneyard Brewing RPM IPA.
We continued on our Portland foodie tour with a stop at the late night Mediterranean food carts for a falafel sandwich and gryo. Portland has so many food trucks it's slightly overwhelming, yet amazing. If you can dream it, I'm sure they have a food truck for it.
We started off the next morning with a trip to Voodoo Doughnuts, a must see in Portland. There was a slight drizzle but luckily we both had rain jackets and rainboots. I'm prepared for all types of weather now that I'm an Alaskan! I think the rain also ensured the line wasn't super long for donuts. We only waited about 20-30 minutes, just enough time to google the menu and make our selections from the crazy array of flavors. We ended up getting 4 donuts because we couldn't decide! It was a good decision so we could continue to enjoy them throughout the day :) My favorite was the maple bavarian cream! We also got a maple bacon, vanilla oreo, and a peanut butter chocolate banana cinnamon fritter. So yummy!
Next to VooDoo is the weekly Saturday Morning Market. The market was so amazing and I could have explored all the shops for much longer than we had time for. There were wood carvings, lots of different art and mixed media, jewelry, pottery, clocks, handcrafted cutting boards, windchimes, etc. I read that it was kind of like a real life Etsy storefront with all the interesting and unique shops and several of the artists actually did have their work on etsy!
We stumbled across this cool shop where the artist used bike components to make jewelry, lamps, and awesome stained glass art. I'm not an avid cyclist, but I got really into riding my bike right after college and trained for the MS150 down in Houston. My eye immediately was drawn to this amazing blue and green stained glass piece that was formed in a bike rim and connected with various bike gears and chains. I couldn't get over how unique and awesome it looked and started talking to the artist a bit more about it. He mentioned it had just won an award in the mixed media category at an art show in Boulder, CO. It was quite an intricate piece, yet pretty expensive, so I decided it would be best to keep walking around the market and browse the other shops. But at every other booth, I couldn't stop thinking about the amazing bike art. I decided I had to go back for it since I'd never been so drawn to a piece. I knew it was meant to be so I took the plunge. The only sad part was that I couldn't take it back with me because it was too large for the plane. So I had to part with my new treasure and wait for it to ship. But I did get to take a picture with the artist before I left. I just think its so neat that I not only have a cool personal piece of art now, but I got to meet the artist! And he told me I made his day that I loved his work so much that I just had to have it :)
Portland is a cool place, but also a little quirky, so I wanted to get a representative souvenir. I ended up finding a cute pair of little silver utensil earrings. One is a fork and one is a spoon.. which seemed appropriately odd but fun. I also found a really pretty sponge holder at a pottery booth. It will be quite handy because I never know where to put my sponge after washing dishes so that it doesn't sit in the sink getting smelly. It has a beautiful mountain painting displayed on it.
I probably could have spent much longer at the market, but we had to get going to some wineries before the tasting times were over for the day. Portland is surrounded by vineyards, but one of the easiest to get to is the Willamette Valley just south of the city, known for their pinots. I could not pronounce the name of this area right to save my life until one of the wine tasting guides taught us a trick - "Willamette Dammit." I kept wanting to say Willa-Met, but finally started saying Will-Am-Met, emphasis on the Am like dammit. We hit up 3 different wineries and I bought a bottle of Pinot Noir at the Four Graces that was quite tasty. I also really enjoyed our tasting of the Dobbes Family Granache Blanc, which apparently is rarely bottled plain instead of blended due to the high acid content. But in order to get our tasting fee waived, we had to buy two bottles of it so I didn't end up splurging. We ended the evening with some delicious sushi to continue on our foodie adventure.
The next morning we woke up earlish to head out to the Wooden Shoe Tulip Festival. My mom had told me about the amazing tulip farms in the Netherlands with their perfect colorful rows as far as the eye could see. This farm was much smaller, but still quite expansive and one of the largest in the US. It had the Holland influence and it was so neat to see the rows and rows of tulips in such vibrant colors. Katie and I kept joking about how we should have dressed up to take cute pictures, but we were going on a hike soon after so unfortunately were in our hiking gear. But the tulips are the true beauty :) We probably spent a good hour or two walking up and down all the rows and finding our favorite types.
Before heading off on our hiking adventure, we decided to stop at the Waffle Window, which made the yelp top 100 list. I'd say it didn't disappoint because we couldn't even narrow it down to two waffles to share, we had to get 3! We ordered at a cute little window on the side of a building and made our way over to some covered picnic tables with free water cups to enjoy our savory and sweet treats. We got the Spicy Bacon Cheddar Avocado Jalapeno waffle, the Three B's (which was bacon, brie, and basil), and a sweet Blueberry Cheesecake waffle to top it off. They were all delicious but the Three B's was my favorite, I love brie!
The waffle window was in a really cute neighborhood on Hawthorne Street with lots of fun shops and things going on. The houses in the neighborhood were so precious and reminded me a little bit of the Houston Heights, but with a lot more action around. I will definitely have to make a trip back to Portland to do some proper shopping, with an added bonus of being sales tax free!
After filling up we headed west to the Columbia River Gorge, which is filled with waterfalls galore. We got a map at the Vista House and took in the excellent view of the Columbia River and valley below. We then drove along the scenic highway and stopped at every waterfall along the route (6 in total I believe). Most of them were pretty close to the road, but a few required a small hike to get up close and see. The most famous and definitely the most crowded was Multnomah Falls, but my favorite was actually Latourell Falls. It was so massive and a beautiful site tucked away off the road. At the last one, Horsetail Falls, we ended up going on a bit of a hike back into the woods to Ponytail Falls. Everything was so green, mossy, and beautiful, and the overcast weather reminded me so much of Twilight. I just kept waiting for Edward Cullen to pop out haha.
I luckily was able to get a late flight back to Anchorage on Sunday night so had enough time to head back to Portland and shower before going to the airport. I even got to sneak in one more delish meal and beer at a brewery in the airport to wrap up my Oregon foodie tour - swiss fondue and Widmer Hefeweizen.
It was a wonderful weekend trip and I think it's safe to say I will be back to Portland!
My first impression of Portland is that it's a super clean city. Obviously its eco-friendly but it was refreshingly clean and beautifully green. Driving was a little scary because not only are there lots of one-way streets, but many of them have only one lane for cars and the rest are for the bus, the train, and bikes. After some troubles and a couple loops around the block, we finally arrived to our hotel in downtown Portland! Katie travels a ton for work and has the Diamond status at Hilton so when we checked in, we were upgraded to a suite on the 22nd floor with great views of the city. However, when we walked into the suite, we noticed there was a wide open attached door to a mega suite that gave us 360 views of the city! We had a living room, dining room, bar, 2 bedrooms, 3 bathrooms, a mega closet, etc. you get the picture. We thought surely there was a mistake, but we enjoyed our sweet "suite" life as we got ready and pumped up the music on the speakers.
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| View of the city |
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| Distances to everywhere |
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| Cool sculptures all around town |
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| Funny sign |
We visited the Dechutes Brewery in town for a delicious dinner and some flights of beer. Portland is a foodies dream with such delicious food, food carts, and microbreweries. So I think it's safe to say we successfully ate our way through Portland. At Dechutes, I had the Obsidian Stout mac and cheese with prosciutto and Katie had the quinoa cashew avocado burger. Both were definite winners and paired delighfully with our flights of beer. I'm pretty sure I can get this beer in Alaska so I made note of my favorites: Chainbreaker White IPA, Red Chair NWPA, and the Double Impact Belgian IPA. We also headed over to Henry's Tavern where they had a ton of other Oregon and Washington beers on tap. I had another good find there as well - Boneyard Brewing RPM IPA.
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| Flights at Deschutes Brewery |
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| Ingenious ice ledge to keep your beers cold |
We continued on our Portland foodie tour with a stop at the late night Mediterranean food carts for a falafel sandwich and gryo. Portland has so many food trucks it's slightly overwhelming, yet amazing. If you can dream it, I'm sure they have a food truck for it.
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| Late night food truck time |
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| Falafel nom nom nom |
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| More street art |
We started off the next morning with a trip to Voodoo Doughnuts, a must see in Portland. There was a slight drizzle but luckily we both had rain jackets and rainboots. I'm prepared for all types of weather now that I'm an Alaskan! I think the rain also ensured the line wasn't super long for donuts. We only waited about 20-30 minutes, just enough time to google the menu and make our selections from the crazy array of flavors. We ended up getting 4 donuts because we couldn't decide! It was a good decision so we could continue to enjoy them throughout the day :) My favorite was the maple bavarian cream! We also got a maple bacon, vanilla oreo, and a peanut butter chocolate banana cinnamon fritter. So yummy!
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| It's VooDoo time! |
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| Waiting 20 minutes in the drizzle for some voodoo |
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| Display case - every donut type you could imagine |
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| Donuts galore! |
Next to VooDoo is the weekly Saturday Morning Market. The market was so amazing and I could have explored all the shops for much longer than we had time for. There were wood carvings, lots of different art and mixed media, jewelry, pottery, clocks, handcrafted cutting boards, windchimes, etc. I read that it was kind of like a real life Etsy storefront with all the interesting and unique shops and several of the artists actually did have their work on etsy!
We stumbled across this cool shop where the artist used bike components to make jewelry, lamps, and awesome stained glass art. I'm not an avid cyclist, but I got really into riding my bike right after college and trained for the MS150 down in Houston. My eye immediately was drawn to this amazing blue and green stained glass piece that was formed in a bike rim and connected with various bike gears and chains. I couldn't get over how unique and awesome it looked and started talking to the artist a bit more about it. He mentioned it had just won an award in the mixed media category at an art show in Boulder, CO. It was quite an intricate piece, yet pretty expensive, so I decided it would be best to keep walking around the market and browse the other shops. But at every other booth, I couldn't stop thinking about the amazing bike art. I decided I had to go back for it since I'd never been so drawn to a piece. I knew it was meant to be so I took the plunge. The only sad part was that I couldn't take it back with me because it was too large for the plane. So I had to part with my new treasure and wait for it to ship. But I did get to take a picture with the artist before I left. I just think its so neat that I not only have a cool personal piece of art now, but I got to meet the artist! And he told me I made his day that I loved his work so much that I just had to have it :)
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| The coolest art pieces that I ever did see |
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| Photo with the artist |
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| I'm obsessed with this girls umbrella, I wanted it! |
Portland is a cool place, but also a little quirky, so I wanted to get a representative souvenir. I ended up finding a cute pair of little silver utensil earrings. One is a fork and one is a spoon.. which seemed appropriately odd but fun. I also found a really pretty sponge holder at a pottery booth. It will be quite handy because I never know where to put my sponge after washing dishes so that it doesn't sit in the sink getting smelly. It has a beautiful mountain painting displayed on it.
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| Mountain sponge holder |
I probably could have spent much longer at the market, but we had to get going to some wineries before the tasting times were over for the day. Portland is surrounded by vineyards, but one of the easiest to get to is the Willamette Valley just south of the city, known for their pinots. I could not pronounce the name of this area right to save my life until one of the wine tasting guides taught us a trick - "Willamette Dammit." I kept wanting to say Willa-Met, but finally started saying Will-Am-Met, emphasis on the Am like dammit. We hit up 3 different wineries and I bought a bottle of Pinot Noir at the Four Graces that was quite tasty. I also really enjoyed our tasting of the Dobbes Family Granache Blanc, which apparently is rarely bottled plain instead of blended due to the high acid content. But in order to get our tasting fee waived, we had to buy two bottles of it so I didn't end up splurging. We ended the evening with some delicious sushi to continue on our foodie adventure.
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| Tasting at Zerba |
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| Cute tasting house at the Four Graces |
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| Enjoying our pinots |
The next morning we woke up earlish to head out to the Wooden Shoe Tulip Festival. My mom had told me about the amazing tulip farms in the Netherlands with their perfect colorful rows as far as the eye could see. This farm was much smaller, but still quite expansive and one of the largest in the US. It had the Holland influence and it was so neat to see the rows and rows of tulips in such vibrant colors. Katie and I kept joking about how we should have dressed up to take cute pictures, but we were going on a hike soon after so unfortunately were in our hiking gear. But the tulips are the true beauty :) We probably spent a good hour or two walking up and down all the rows and finding our favorite types.
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| Beautiful tulip fields |
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| Our Easter pic |
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| I couldn't stop taking pics of the beautiful tulips |
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| Perfect rows |
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| I loved the multi colored ones |
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| These were my favorite |
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| Close up of my favorites |
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| Kind of look like poppies from this angle, my favorite flower |
Before heading off on our hiking adventure, we decided to stop at the Waffle Window, which made the yelp top 100 list. I'd say it didn't disappoint because we couldn't even narrow it down to two waffles to share, we had to get 3! We ordered at a cute little window on the side of a building and made our way over to some covered picnic tables with free water cups to enjoy our savory and sweet treats. We got the Spicy Bacon Cheddar Avocado Jalapeno waffle, the Three B's (which was bacon, brie, and basil), and a sweet Blueberry Cheesecake waffle to top it off. They were all delicious but the Three B's was my favorite, I love brie!
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| Waffle Window time |
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| Savory and Sweet waffles |
The waffle window was in a really cute neighborhood on Hawthorne Street with lots of fun shops and things going on. The houses in the neighborhood were so precious and reminded me a little bit of the Houston Heights, but with a lot more action around. I will definitely have to make a trip back to Portland to do some proper shopping, with an added bonus of being sales tax free!
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| Precious houses in Portland |
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| Cute streets ready for springtime |
After filling up we headed west to the Columbia River Gorge, which is filled with waterfalls galore. We got a map at the Vista House and took in the excellent view of the Columbia River and valley below. We then drove along the scenic highway and stopped at every waterfall along the route (6 in total I believe). Most of them were pretty close to the road, but a few required a small hike to get up close and see. The most famous and definitely the most crowded was Multnomah Falls, but my favorite was actually Latourell Falls. It was so massive and a beautiful site tucked away off the road. At the last one, Horsetail Falls, we ended up going on a bit of a hike back into the woods to Ponytail Falls. Everything was so green, mossy, and beautiful, and the overcast weather reminded me so much of Twilight. I just kept waiting for Edward Cullen to pop out haha.
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| Columbia River Gorge |
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| Vista House overlooking the Columbia River Gorge |
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| Pretty mossy drive |
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| Latourell Falls |
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| Latourell Falls |
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| Latourell Falls |
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| Heart shaped shadows |
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| Shepperd's Dell |
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| Bridal Veil Falls |
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| Wahkeena Falls |
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| Multnomah Falls |
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| Multnomah Falls |
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| Oklahoma shaped hole on our hike |
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| Walking behind Ponytail Falls |
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| Ponytail Falls |
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| Hiking across some rivers |
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| "Taking the path of least resistance is how you end up in the deepest rut" |
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| Everything was so green and mossy |
I luckily was able to get a late flight back to Anchorage on Sunday night so had enough time to head back to Portland and shower before going to the airport. I even got to sneak in one more delish meal and beer at a brewery in the airport to wrap up my Oregon foodie tour - swiss fondue and Widmer Hefeweizen.
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| Airport dinner |
It was a wonderful weekend trip and I think it's safe to say I will be back to Portland!
