Portland, OR

Last week was super busy! We had two sets of friends visit during the week and then we took off to Portland for the weekend. We had never explored the city before and we had a serious reason to head south. Jeff, an old friend of ours from URI, was in Portland for a conference and Erik lives relatively close by in Corvallis, OR - so we had a little RI reunion. Too bad all our friends in RI couldn't attend. Don't worry though - we had a few toasts in their honor!

On Friday night Jay and I met up with a friend I had made in Antarctica - Isaac. He is working on his PhD at Portland State and knows the area well. We met up at a Japanese restaurant where I had one of the best veggo sushi rolls ever. Then we headed to this totally amazing bar called "The Gilt Club" where we ordered bizarre and really tasty cocktails. It was great to meet Isaac's wife, Sandra and chill with some new buddies. They are awesome, I hope we hang out together more often.

Erik arrived the next morning and we went to a great breakfast joint called "Gravy" where your stomach needed to be about double the size to fit in all the breakfast food. Good thing there was a lot of food, I was starving!

We scored on spring flowers! The cherry trees were blossoming along the Willamette River. We wandered through these trees to the Portland Saturday Market.


I scored on fried dough (a downfall of mine, I love the stuff) and Nepali chai! A random combo, but hey, you can do whatever the heck you want in Portland.

After leaving the market, we headed to the northeastern part of town to start some brew tasting. Portland has a shitload of breweries, more per capita than any other city in the USA. Ahhhh. Erik had done his research and off we went. I can't keep up with the boys without dying, so I had baby glasses while they had big boy glasses. This place had an amazing barleywine.


Jeff arrived later that night and we scooped him up at the airport. We ate at a Vietnamese place called "Silk" and then headed to the last brewery of the evening, the New Old Lompoc. It seemed to have only amazing beers. We played scrabble, listened to Jeff's stories (it had been way to long since we had seen this dude), fought over words in the scrabble game, and had a grand time.

The next morning we went to this breakfast joint Jeff found on the good ol' internet. It was a classic old dinner complete with a classic diner menu. Their sign outside said "eggs...things". I never saw the "thing" on the menu, but I was intrigued. Jeff had to leave us at this point for his conference...far too short of a gathering, but better than nothing! Jay, Erik, and I headed to Forest Park for a nice hike and then we split up and headed home.

Good times! Photos can be found here: https://picasaweb.google.com/julie.barber1/April2011Portland#