I spent last wednesday night through monday morning up in Portland. I still haven’t figured out where I want to “settle” after my work hiatus and I’ve had many people tell me they thought I’d love Portland…and well I did.
I took a bunch of photos that you can check out on flickr.
It’s a 2hr flight from SLC to Portland. Once I got off the plane, you hop on the light rail right outside the door. It’s $2 to ride anywhere on the entire Tri-Met system for 2hrs. The MAX (aka light rail) took about 25 minutes to get to downtown, and a block or so from my hotel. I was staying at the Hilton, since I got a killer deal ($89/nt vs $189 list price). By the time I got settled it was almost 9pm, I spotted a Qdoba but they were closing so I got some Carl’s Jr.
Thursday morning I got up and got some breakfast at McDonalds and then walked up north a little to the “fiber arts district“. It wasn’t quite 10am yet so I got some tea at Starbucks across the street. I hit up Knit Purl, Josephine’s Dry Goods, and Let It Bead. Check my post on crafterati for the details on my crafty haul.
I went back to my hotel room and dropped off my bags and hopped on the MAX to Beaverton. I have a friend who works for Nike who invited me for lunch and a tour of their headquarters. They have a huge campus with the buildings named after their big athletes (eg Tiger Woods, Mia Hamm). The food in the cafeteria was pretty healthy, good, and cheap. He showed me around and I saw the putting green, soccer fields, gym, climbing wall etc. It seems like a really cool place to work.
I got back on the shuttle and then too the train back to the city. I decided to head across the river to the Hawthorne district to another yarn store. I had bought an all day ticket for $4.25 so I wanted to get some exploring done. Yarn Garden was enormous and awesome, which I’m sure you read when you clicked on the crafterati link earlier. Then I headed back to my room as I was pretty tired and took a nap. My friend called and we made plans to meet up for First Thursday – when all the galleries in the art district open up to the public. Due to traffic and other stuff that ended up not happening, so instead I ordered room service since none of the more takeouty places around are open past 9pm. Then I watched Ugly Betty and the 2hr Grey’s Anatomy. When room service came the girl said she never got to watch anything good anymore 
Friday I slept in late and packed up my stuff and checked out, leaving my bags with the bell hop. Then I took the bus over to LoBu (or Lower Burnside) across the river. It’s an “up and coming” area that had a ton of cute shops. I went into a few vintage shops, a japanese store, and some very design-y type joints. Overall it had a very Brooklyny feel to me.
I ended up with a lovely antique pressed mothers day card, some stationary based on 50′s patterns, and 2 Engrish Japanese stationary sets. One has 4 leaf clovers and lady bugs and says “Four leaf clover – I wish you every a lot of happiness” and the other has a yellow car with a face and says “Happy Welcome – special smile make you happy!” and they were $3 or $4 each. I can’t wait to send them out! I went back downtown and went to a pretty cool button/trim store too, then took the street car up to the pearl district, which is very Soho without all the designer stores. I went to the coolest paper store called Oblation Papers. They have antique presses and you can watch them print. I realize I want one! I also want to learn to sew book bindings (with apologies to Miss Hawklet). It was going to rain so I went and got some Pizza before heading back to the hotel.
Friday evening Amanda picked me up and we headed to the Pearl District. We had reservations at Oba! but when I went in the dining room was empty and the bar was doing happy hour so I started stalking us a table. The food was relatively inexpensive for the happy hour deal and I had the most delicious mango mojito…or two. Then we started walking around. We went to a vintage store and I got this awesome bag, that from the tag looked at least 70′s. It was a brand new tote with brown plastic handles and the bottom part could snap two thirds of the way up. You could then fold over the top and make it a clutch. It was $10 so I bought it. So glad that I did too!
Then we went to Powell’s – the world’s largest book store. I bought some miscellaneous stuff there (not books). It’s pretty awesome if you like books, like me. Then we drove over to the Portland City Grill aka PCG. It’s on the 30th floor and overlooks the city. We got a table and ordered some drinks. I had fab cosmopolitan and watched the fireworks on the river. Ben and my roommate joined us. My roommate? Yes, she was in town just for the weekend to visit Ben. We had some more drinks and then we all headed home. Amanda wanted to take me to Douglas Fir which is a former Denny’s that they covered entirely with wood, but we were both beat.
Saturday morning we drove out to Mount Hood for some snow shredding. It was overcast but it eventually cleared up and was very nice. Amanda took me all over the mountain before we met up with Ben and Heidi. Then we drove up to Timberline to see the Historic Timberline Lodge, which is where they filmed The Shining. We walked around inside and then headed back to Amanda’s house.
After some napping and me hacking the wireless network’s password, we met up with Ben & Heidi again for a late dinner at a Cuban restaurant. I had some snapper that was divine and all of the food was good. We ended up all sharing a flan. We thought about going to Douglas Fir but we were drained, again. So we went home.
Sunday we slept late and then headed to Portland for brunch at Mother’s. There was a 30min wait so we walked over to US Outdoor Store and got back just in time for our table. I had the portabella mushroom scramble that was delicious. Fueled up for some shopping, Amanda and I drove over to the NW 23rd/Nob Hill area. It’s a main street with tons of indie shops. That’s one really cool thing about Portland, it’s got so man independent stores. Yes there’s a Niketown, Nordstroms, and Saks but they seem to be outnumbered by non brand name shops.
Our first stop was Twist. Amanda had told me about their website long ago, so I was familiar with their stable of independent jewelry designers. We both picked up some earrings that were made from some vintage plastic flowers. I also bought a metal and glass bracelet. You can buy stuff from $15-$10000 there. I saw some stuff that I loved, but was well out of my price range. It gave me some inspiration for my own jewelry designs though.
We hit tons of other shops where I picked up a new wallet..from a NJ company called Lodis. It’s in Denville…might have to see if they sell outlet stuff anywhere. We got some gelato too. I had pistachio and berry. Yum! Amanda did some shopping too and we left around 6pm when all the shops were closing. We went to trader joe’s and a grocery store to pick up wine, veggies and some chicken for grilling. We got home and started cooking. It was warm so we had a nice candle lit dinner on the back deck with grilled portobella mushrooms, peppers, and chicken, rice pilaf, and a nice salad. Of course we had 2 bottle of wine to drink and some extremely yummy grilled pineapple. Then we went inside and watched style channel and drank more wine. For some reason I watched 20 minutes of an informercial for “Meaningful Beauty by Cindy Crawford”. I fail to see how spending $50/month on anti-aging skin care is meaningful though.
We got up early on monday morning and Amanda drove me to the airport. I made my flight which is always a happy occurrence when Amanda is involved with air travel.
