When in Portland

This was our mantra during our 4 days in the city.

Some days it was great – like when we all got new Birkenstocks. Others weren’t so great – like when we consumed a week’s worth of food in one sitting.

If you’ve never been to Portland. Stop what your doing, check out flights, and GO! It’s an incredible city. In the short time we were there we saw city, forest, coast, mountains, snow and sun. Such a cool environment. And I can’t say enough about the people – friendliest bunch of people you’ll ever meet!

We all arrived late Thursday night and stayed up until 4:30 a.m catching up on life. It had been a year (or more) since the 3 of us were together. We couldn’t sleep past 7:30 a.m and immediately went exploring. First order of business, brunch. Portland has a top-notch food scene and believe me it did not disappoint. I was completely full the entire 4 days. We sure were a well fed trio.

Friday was spent checking out Portland. We saw the Steel Bridge, the Rose Garden, Multanomah Falls, and then headed to the coast that evening.

The coast was only about an hour and a half from Portland, but it was a winding road through the mountains and our Chevy Captiva rental didn’t have much pep. You should have heard it, it sounded like a go-cart making it’s way up the mountains. Interesting drive to say the least…

Saturday was spent at Cannon Beach. It was amazing to feel the temperature difference between the city and the coast. When we left Portland on Friday it was 95 degrees. When we arrived at the coast it was 65 degrees and foggy. CRAZY!

It was so neat to see the NW coast – completely different than any other coast I’ve visited.

See the big rock in the background of this picture below? The one shaped like the one above? These pictures were taken maybe 2 hours apart, and look how much the tide had come in!

While on the coast we explored the town, got our Birkenstocks, made our way up to Ecola State Park, and drove 15 minutes North of Cannon Beach to Seaside. All amazing.

Before making the trek back to Portland, we pulled out our paper maps… seriously we used the ‘ole Rand McNallys because our high tech iPhones had no service.  We used our map of wineries and took a different route back to the city so we could see some vineyards.

This winery was probably 30 minutes away from the coast, and the temperature was 30 degrees warmer.

So, so beautiful.

Portland is broken into quarters, and each quarter is known for something different. We did our best to hit all the major spots in each district.

We stayed at a hotel on the SW side of Portland, but Saturday night we wanted to explore the SE side. There was a restaurant on the SE side called Pok Pok that we were all dying to try, and few other places that were MUST DO’s on our list. I will write about these restaurants in a later post…

Sunday morning we dropped Megs off at the airport and Erin and I spent the day exploring the rest of the downtown area. We did a little shopping, tried a few more restaurants on our list, hit up the Sunday market, and walked up on this World Cup watch party hosted by Adidas.

I love my friends…

It’s amazing how we don’t see each other for a year (plus!) and pick up right where we left off. Good friends are so hard to find, and I was blessed with the best!

This post did not cover all the amazing restaurants, shops, drinks, and people we met while in Portland. I will do a post over recommendations on where to stay, eat, and shop very soon.

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