An Idaho Mum: Perusing Portland

We had a lovely time visiting Portland, Oregon this weekend. It's a lovely city, not too big but not too small, very clean and very green. Great shopping, lots of cute little neighborhoods with boutique shopping and lovely restaurants, all within walking distance (we walked A LOT).

We stayed at Hotel 50, right on the Willamette River, it was very nice, small but functional. The restaurant however, H5O, was a complete joke! It was trying to be uber trendy and failed totally. We went in for dessert one night, I ordered strawberry cheesecake and it was a penny -sized biscuit with a blob of strawberry puree over the top on a HUGE plate. But the location couldn't be beat, right downtown and right by the Max stop (a lightrail system).

We got to town late Thursday night and ate at a brewpub right by our hotel (Portland is famous for it's brewpubs, hence Brian's excitement at coming here!). Friday we ate breakfast at Mother's Bistro, recommended by our neighbor Becky. It was yummy - crunchy French Toast is definitely my new favorite breakfast item! Then we walked around the downtown district just exploring and checking out some real shops (finally!). In the evening we walked into the Pearl District and checked out Powells Books store - the largest independent bookstore in the world and quite possibly the best bookstore in the entire world - I could've spent the whole weekend in there. There were lots of weird vampy looking teenagers running around though, which we thought was quite strange until we realized it was the release party for a hugely popular vampire teen book series. We then meandered to Jake's Grill a famous seafood place, which was nice, but definitely not worth the 90 minute wait we were told about (we managed to circumnavigate that by eating out on their sidewalk).

Saturday morning we got up early and took the street car to The North West District and walked around trying to find a nice breakfast spot. A friendly Portlander pointed us toward the Stepping Stone, a really casual down-home (Oregon-style) diner right by a nice neighborhood park. Their slogan is "You Eat Here Because We Let You." Yummy food, which I unfortunately had to eat cold as Owen made a huge mess in his stroller! We then headed to the river to watch the Red Bull Flu Tag which was so insanely crowded that we had to bail out before we got trampled. We then walked a very long way to the Rose Garden, which was very beautiful, up on a hill overlooking downtown Portland. On our way back from the garden we stopped in the North West to check out Bridgeport Brewery and have a sampler tray. Then walked back down to the Pearl District and enjoyed a yummy, expensive cupcake at Cupcake Jones (what is it about cupcakes all of a sudden? This place had a huge queue too - although nothing like the place in NYC). Then we walked around a lot more trying to find a place for dinner that was baby-friendly and not too pricey - it took us a while. Just as we were about to drop from exhaustion we came across OBA, a Spanish restaurant where we had really fabulous dinner of flank steak and roasted chicken.

Sunday we had the morning to explore and check out another great breakfast place The Bijou Cafe (where we saw Julia Louise Dreyfus standing in line!), and the Saturday Market (which was also open on Sunday). By 1pm we hopped on the Max for a quick ride back to the airport to catch the one hour flight to Boise and were back home by 8pm Sunday night.