A conversation about places we had never visited one night turned into booking plane tickets and a hotel the next. Brian and I jumped on a plane last Thursday and headed to Portland. Now I can't completely say I have never been to Portland. I was actually born in Portland. My family lived in Lake Oswego until I was 4 when we moved to Utah. So technically I have been to Portland, but just not when I could remember.
The trip started out great with a great flight. We got bumped to FIRST CLASS. I have never flown first class. There is so much room in those chairs.
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| Here we are enjoying first class |
Our first order of business in Portland...food. Breakfast was
Crunchy French Toast and
Salomon Hash at Mother's Bistro & Bar. Oh My Goodness! I could live on this and nothing else for the rest of my life. After breakfast we walked over to the Portlandia statue. Don't get confused with the
TV show. The
Portlandia statue is a huge copper statue that crouches down from atop the Michael Graves Portland Building. It was actually very beautiful.
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| Hello pretty lady |
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| I think she is asking for a bite of their sandwich |
And of course after breakfast we had to go to Powell Book store. Where we bought a few books including a travel book so we plan more trips.
As we walked the streets we discovered a really interesting feature about Portland. There are little cities of food carts. They were every few blocks and there would be an entire block of cart vendors.
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| Early in the morning so they weren't open yet. |
We ended our first day in Portland with walk through the International Rose Test Garden, which came highly recommended. Too bad there were only a few blooms.
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| Rose Garden |
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| Smelling the only blooms |
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| Views of Portland |
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| Tall walls of foliage |
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| Brian checking out the rose facts |
Oh and did I mention that Brian has friends in Portland. We went to this really cool restaurant in an old high school;
McMenamins. Day 1 was perfect.
