Thursday, March 01, 2012

Portland...ia

On a quick vacation to Portland, land of beer, hipsters and coffee - very good coffee, I might add. And the hipsters are a surprisingly friendly and attitude free bunch, unlike their Vancouver counterparts...but I'm jumping ahead here.

We drove down with pals A&J, through some pretty crazy snow squalls and rain storms. I would have been white knuckling through most of it, jut J calmly soldiered along behind the wheel. We stopped for some very good Mexican food In the North end of Seattle - somewhere no non-Mexican would know about unless they were a slightly crazed chowhound, as A luckily is. Also lucky is her command of Spanish, as there wasn't a whole lot of English being spoken. And even more lucky? The super tasty eats (see snap of happy munching Boy below).


We arrived in Portland, and stopped at Ristretto for a cup of house roasted coffee, and a chat with the cheery baristas about coffee in Portland - something taken very seriously in these parts.


We got to the hotel (Paramount - nice place, good deal), then went for cocktails at Teardrop - I had the awkwardly named Artistaint (gin, Cynar, elderflower and lemon - lovely arc of sweet to bitter, so very good), then we headed to Deschutes where i had a gluten free elk burger and GOOD gluten free beer (oh how I miss good beer)....followed by more drinks and snacks at Clyde Common. What has struck me the most is the friendliness of the people here - everyone seems willing to provide suggestions of good places to go in their fair town. Such a different vibe than Vancouver.

So - so far, loving Portland. More later:)


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Location:SW Taylor St,Portland,United States

1 comment:

Rizaldo Padilla said...

What, glutton free beer?