I Love Portland!

Everyone always said I would love Portland, but I never knew exactly why, or to what extent. For those who know me well, you know how much I love San Francisco. I always assumed when we decided to call it a trip and pick a place to live, it would be there. However, after three weeks (and counting) in Portland, it seems all too clear to both Sam and I that this is where we belong. Where to start...

Portland is laid out in four… ahem, FIVE quadrants. What’s interesting is that in Seattle, I looked up where the cool neighborhood was (Capitol Hill), and that’s mostly where we hung out. In Portland, I just looked up cool places – restaurants, bars, parks, etc. – and slowly discovered that we were most in love with the southeast. Upon discussing this with our new friends, we found out that yes, of course, the southeast is the best. What’s odd about that is that it isn’t downtown. I desperately want to live in a loft, but all of the lofts are in the Pearl district, which for those reading in Dallas, is like Uptown. I’m definitely a city girl, but the coolest parts of Portland are the NE and SE neighborhoods. Actually, to be honest, I haven’t found an area that isn’t cool. It’s almost an entire city of relatively professional young people, and every street, whether it’s particularly cool or not, has at least one awesome restaurant or coffee shop or bar or vintage store or something. Not just in a couple neighborhoods, IN THE WHOLE CITY. I have yet to find a ghetto, only awesomeness!

The skyline here, at night, looks less like a cluster of buildings, and more like a skyline of trees littered with the tiny lights of the city. There is a city park about every four blocks. Which means wherever you live, there are three or four parks within easy walking distance, and most of them are completely awesome! I spent the other day reading near an almost secluded duck pond in the middle of the city. We went hiking last weekend in a forest that was maybe 15 minutes outside of town. The nature here is just incredible.

The food situation is fantastic as well. SO MANY VEGETARIAN RESTAURANTS! And the ones that aren’t veg have plenty of options that are. The food here is so good, but it’s all mostly affordable, rather than just amazing fine dining (although they do have as that well). Whatever kind of food you want in whatever price range, you will not be disappointed! They have an enormous farmers market every Saturday, as well as a smaller one somewhere in the city every day. You can easily buy eggs laid or blackberries picked just the day before, any day of the week! There are also plenty of community gardens, not to mention most people having back yards, so growing you're own food is a legitimate option as well. Everybody truly cares about local, organic, sustainable food, and it's so easy to find!

Getting around town is a breeze as well. We haven’t actually tried the public transportation, because we’re staying about ten minutes north of the city, and the parking situation is so fantastic we haven’t had to use it. It’s all parallel parking, but it’s always easy to find, and we rarely have to pay. The city is also completely bike friendly, with bike lanes on most streets, and a car population that is sensitive to the massive quantities of bike patrons. When we move here, between the public system and our bikes, getting around will just not be a problem.

The other most exciting thing is how they deal with their trash in Portland. Anytime you want to throw something away, you’re confronted with a decision: compost, recycle or trash. And let me tell you, whatever you’re disposing of is almost never “trash,” given the alternatives. The entire city is set up for composting and recycling, and it’s kind of expected that you’re going to participate. I’ve talked to several people that never knew that it’s not that way everywhere. You don’t even have to care about the environment – just put your trash in the right bin. The other day I saw a solar-paneled trash compactor on the street, so they don’t have to use as many man hours collecting trash. That is what I’m talking about!

Besides all these things that are super amazing about Portland, from a more personal perspective, this is where our friends are. We’ve made lots of friends in our travels, but not like this. It feels like everyone around us is super friendly, and wants to talk and meet us and stay friends. We’ve made so many friends here that we continue to see on a regular basis. In three weeks, it already feels like we have a life here, and I’m not going to lie, I really, REALLY don’t want to leave! We’ve pretty much decided that this is where we’ll live next, and all of you will have a place to stay if you ever want to visit Portland!

We’ve been here about three and a half weeks, which is almost twice as long as anywhere else, so believe you me there will be some review blogs ahead!

Vancouver and the San Juan Islands

As usual, I am way behind. I was all excited to sit down and finally blog about Portland, when I realized I never talked about Vancouver, B.C. and the San Juan Islands. So, here we are.   

Vancouver was alright. After having just come from Seattle, it was a little disappointing. To be fair, Sam and I were both crazy busy with work, and completely spaced on the fact that our mobile hotspot was going to incur roaming charges, so we got up super early every day and went hopping from hotspot to hotspot all over the city. And we couldn’t use our phones unless we had wifi. No problem when truly vacationing in another country… less cool when you’re working. We ultimately decided we would have to come back another time, when we have more time to go exploring and aren’t working the whole time.

That being said, real Canadian poutine is a revelation! Don’t trust these American restaurants slapping mozzarella on some fries and calling it poutine. Fries + dark, brown gravy (frequently made mostly from meat drippings) + CHEESE CURDS. For those of you who are unfamiliar with cheese curds, as I was, they are big glops of this white, stringy cheese that go perfectly with the flavor intensity of the gravy. We ate it every day we were there.

I found the differences in Border Patrol to be amusing. Getting into Canada, there was maybe a 15-20 minute wait, and the woman was super friendly until finally getting serious and making sure we didn’t have any guns. “It’s a very serious offense in Canada, guys, if you’re packing and a cop pulls you over, you will go to prison for a federal offense.” Still friendly, but Canada’s main thing was guns. To get back into America, we waited a hour, hour and a half, there were very scary looking guards with drug dogs running around (think Hank from Breaking Bad), and yet when we got to the booth with the angry looking American man, we were grilled on whether we were carrying any produce. I do understand the produce issue, but still. No questions about guns, or drugs, or stow-aways, just… vegetables. Priorities, guys, priorities. :)

At the suggestion of some friends in Seattle, we cut our Vancouver trip short and spent the weekend on the San Juan Islands. Unfortunately, we totally spaced on the fact that it was Labor Day weekend, and almost didn’t get a place to camp, but luckily came across a state park that had a few first-come-first-served camping spots, and it was a Thursday. We had a cozy little spot tucked in the woods next to a lake, so no complaints here! It would have cost $200 to ferry Voltron to the islands, so we camped on the mainland and took the ferry out each day.


The first day we went to Orcas Island, which was much less crowded and generally less inhabited. We took a shuttle around to the small town, which had a farmers/craft market going on, and eventually ended up going for a beautiful hike. The second day, we stopped by a fantastic lavender farm (that my friend Chris would have loved), and then went kayaking for the very first time! It was bay/straight kayaking, so less maneuvering through white water, and more relaxing and beautiful, despite having to paddle the whole time. We got to see seals, tons of jelly fish and a bald eagle! It was awesome! We ended the evening with a drive to the west side of the island to watch the sunset. Just beautiful.

So then we headed to Portland, where we are now, and I can’t wait to tell you about it! Stay tuned!

Seattle, WA

After Beloved, Sam and I, plus Deondra and Danica all loaded up in Voltron and made a day trip of getting to Seattle, where my sister was most interested in visiting. The vibe of the city is a little more generic than I thought it would be, but the longer we were there, the more we found awesome places to hang out. We ended up spending the vast majority of our time in the Capitol Hill neighborhood, and also really enjoyed Belltown.

Restaurants

Our first day there, the girls and I ate at Steelhead Diner, which was to die for… they served shrimp and crab tater tots that were ridiculous. We had amazing little French canapés at Café Kanape, and fantastic sushi at Momiji. List was probably the best happy hour we had – small plates of Chilean sea bass and truffle gnocchi with patio seating. The Saint, which boasted Mexican/South American cuisine, also had an awesome happy hour with small plates of various enchiladas and tacos and ceviche that was all unique and delicious, and some really interesting tequila cocktails. Our last day there, as always, we met an awesome couple (hi, Paul and Kiki!) who took us to the Alibi Room for some pizza and Spicy Mac and Cheese!

Coffeeshops

My favorite coffeeshop was definitely Joe Bar, which in addition to coffee had a fantastic selection of Belgian beer, perfect for when I have to work but my friends want to drink. On an unrelated note, this is where we first met Kelly, Sam’s friend from turntable.fm, who is one cool chick! Bedlam Coffee was very cool, although it took some time to get used to the alt-country station they had going on all the time. I did get used to it, though, and the drinks and ambiance brought me there more than once. Our other favorite was the Artisan Café in Belltown, which played catchy French music and had a heck of a tuna melt.

Bars

I wish I had a better section on bars, but for no lack of trying, there were just not many we liked. Liberty was the only one I feel a strong urge to mention… we went there with Deondra when we were looking for sushi, and found it to be more of a cocktail lounge, so we left. Later that week, when a lounge is what we were going for, we went back and settled in for some great drinks, music, and… get ready for this… AMAZING LATE NIGHT SUSHI! I did not see that coming. Rock Box was also pretty cool – a karaoke bar where you could rent out rooms for groups, Japanese style (lots of bachelorette parties), or you could sing in the main bar, where microphones were passed around the crowd. It was awesome at first, until it got crowded and loud, inebriated girls wanted to sing along with Deondra in the second mic, which I had to steal and hide so I could properly admire my friend. That’s about when we left. I should also mention Joe Bar in this section. Cheap, Belgian beer. For real.

In addition to your standard eating and drinking, we also did some of the classic and not-so-classic Seattle things – Pike Place Market, Seattle Art Museum and the Sculpture Garden. Took a ferry over to Bainbridge Island to watch Shakespeare in the Park’s Taming of the Shrew with a picnic feast of wines and cheeses and berries and breads and chocolates. Went blues dancing. Watched Monty Python and the Holy Grail at an outdoor movie theater. Overall, definitely made the list for top five cities in the states, and I'm so glad Deondra and Danica got to be there for it!

(Sorry I didn’t take any pictures…)

Eugene, OR and Beloved

I am completely overwhelmed by the vast amount of stuff we’ve been up to in the six weeks since my last blog, including being super busy at work, which is my excuse for not writing in so long. In the interest of catching up without also overwhelming you, I’m mostly just going to hit the highlights, and break it up into a few chunks.

After FaerieWorlds we stayed in Eugene for about a week. The main thing we’re finding is that regardless of how awesome we hear a small town is, it’s just always still too small for us. Eugene was no exception. We did get to spend some time with Sam’s cousins, which was fun, and got to spend a day at a pretty killer block party with tons of bands and booths and food and such. Other highlights were a bar called Sam Bond’s Garage, a restaurant called Izakaya Meiji that had a great patio and delicious cocktails, and a wonderful vegetarian restaurant called Laughing Planet.

Shortly thereafter, we went to Portland for a few days to pick up Danica (sister) and Deondra (best friend) who flew in to go to the Beloved festival and hang out in Seattle for a week. I almost do not have words to describe the awesomeness that was Beloved, but since this is a blog made out of words, I will try. You may recall me talking about Lightning in a Bottle at the beginning of our festival season… it consisted of two main elements. Up the hill was the Temple of Consciousness, which played host to a yoga tent with classes going all day, a meditation temple (which was a huge, climbable wooden art), speakers all day discussing a wide range of spiritual things, and world music. Down the hill were a handful of stages with some of the best electronic music out there right now. Beloved was as if someone made an entire festival out of the Temple of Consciousness. Every person we met was real and interesting and in love with everything, same as us. The dance floor was covered in foam mats and no shoes were allowed, which somehow created a very cozy, connected kind of experience. I was so excited to get to share the experience with Danica and Deondra! 

Next up: Seattle!