Ding-ding!!  All aboard the Portland Party Bus!

Brasserie Montmartre. The perfect brunch spot in Portland.

Last full day of our trip, and finally we were off to Portland!!  We were up, bright and early, having survived our night in the closed circulation Airstream, post-chilli bean dinner, without incident or loss of olfactory function.  After making sure the Airstream was spotlessly clean and all evidence of the previous evening's Wildlife Bingo was scrubbed away, we locked up the Canister of Cool and headed out of the irrepressibly dull Sauvie Island for the excitement of the mainland!!

Alas, the weather did not share our enthusiasm.

I guess we'd been pretty lucky over the last couple of days in that it didn't rain constantly, but that there had been a fair dollop of sunshine instead.  But, today, ahh....the weather was far more...um...Portlandian.

CUE SOMBRE VOICEOVER

"....And so it was, under glowering skies filled with dark clouds heavy with rain, our two brave adventurers finally completed the perilous and epic journey that had taken them so very very far from home.  Just across the ancient iron bridge which marked the boundaries of the kingdom, the fabled city of myth and legend lay before them, rising from the mists like a slightly damp phoenix...."

****...wait...what????....that doesnt make sense!..... a damp phoenix??.....  well, bugger this, then, for writing my blog in Ancient Legend font.... I'm switching back to Arial font....*****

So we took Highway 30 from Sauvie Island to Portland.  It was raining and we went over a few bridges to enter the city.  Fortunately, not having to slog our way through any forests of murderers or roads made of stony jumpy popcorn aided our progress no end, so it only took us about 40mins before we made it to Portland city centre.  I (huzzah!) had managed to book us into the Westin Portland for free on my Starwoods points (yey for free stuff!) and, as we found the hotel, we realized just quite what a win its location was.  The hotel was slap bang in the middle of everything, so was the absolute perfect base from which to explore Portland.

Announcing the date for the annual coloring contest at the
Bistro (held for the last 50 years) - examples
 of previous years winners surround the chalkboard

As it was only about 10am (echoes of the Twilight Zone again..), it was far too early to check in, so instead we found somewhere to park up (in the middle of a car park surrounded by food carts - how very Portland!) and decided to go get some food.  By chance, we came across this very cute French bistro-type place which fit the bill perfectly - it was all croissants and iron lighting fixtures and crepes and omelets and bottomless mimosas and everything!!  Did I mention the bottomless mimosas?  It was also just round the corner from the hotel - which also happened to be right round the corner from Nordstrom's.  I had only learnt the startling revelation the previous day that, in Oregon, THERE IS NO SALES TAX!!!   This really is a mythical land, full of treasure waiting to be discovered.  Although a trip to Nordstrom's after bottomless mimosas  could be considered a foolhardy mission, fraught with danger, that's just kinda how we roll, so after a delightful - and substantial - brunch (which probably rendered the trying on of clothes utterly futile), off we trotted/waddled to see what bargains could be unearthed.

Ding ding!  All aboard!!

Fortunately (for me), I didn't really find anything I fancied (phew) but Lori found a cute little top for dinner tonight, so it was a worthwhile expedition.  As we entered Nordstrom's we couldn't help but notice a big red old-fashioned British double decker bus parked right outside!  Obviously we had to investigate, and discovered a tour company in only their second day of operation who'd just started running Big Red Bus Tours round Portland.  Well.  It just had to be done, didn't it?  It actually made perfect sense - the bus tour was about 2hrs long and would take us to see all the main areas, landmarks and highlights of the city, so it was the ideal way to see a lot of the city in a short space of time.  I'm actually a big fan of touristy-type bus tours when I go abroad for that very reason - I've taken tours in Singapore, Madrid, Rome, Barcelona and various other places and its great for giving you the lay of the land, as well as a sense of where you'd like to go back and visit again.  So, we decided to take the 1pm tour, after some serious power-shopping (Nordstrom's, Macys and TJ Maxx in less than an hour - we don't mess about....).

Yep.  It was raining.  A lot.  This is what
gritting your teeth and smiling through it looks like...

It soon became obvious this new company was staffed completely by optimists as - instead of the closed top bus - they took out the open-top double decker instead!  And thus it came to pass that we ended up doing an open-aired bus tour of Portland on a Sunday afternoon in the absolute p*ssing rain!!   Yep - after about 5 mins, the heavens opened and we proceeded to get very wet, very quickly - but, in true British spirit, we gritted our teeth, kept a stiff upper lip and carried on.  Except for 10 mins when the rain got VERY heavy, we toughed it out on the upper deck, in the rain and the cold.

Why?

Oh, I don't know.  Bloody-mindedness?  A belief that the sun would break through the clouds any.....moment....now....?  Too many mimosas for brunch?    Its a mystery.  I think it was also the additional element of danger of avoiding the tree branches that continually whipped across the top deck that kept us transfixed.  It was quite the workout - both mentally and physically.   Take your eyes off the approaching arborage for a moment, and a pointy branch would have 'em out in an instant.   Honestly, it was actually a little dangerous, as you could see that someone could get seriously poked in the face with an errant tree branch, so I hope for their future litigation prospects they get that sorted out asap.  Anyway, here are some of the highlights of our Super Soggy Sunday Bus Bonanza:

Heading out of the city,
we saw some very fancy houses in Portland Heights.  

WHOAH.  It all got a bit spacey on the Super Soggy Bus...

A rather groovy red bridge.  One of several groovy bridges.

Huzzah!!  To the trains!!!

Largest book store in Portland!!

The queue outside Voodoo Doughnuts.
 Yep.  People really are standing on line for over an hour
for a doughnut.  That's just craziness, people.  

No matter where in the world you go,
there's always a Chinatown...

Another bridge.  This one with a train on it.

Stripey bridge

The oldest outdoors goods store in Portland.  Complete
with a choice of Western or English riding saddles.
 How civilized.

After our tour, we were both frozen solid (funnily enough), so it was time to go thaw out with an Irish coffee at Jake's Grill (recommended to us by the guy in the shoe department at Nordstrom's).  Alas, the Irish coffee wasn't quite hot enough (there's nothing worse than lukewarm coffee), so we sent it back and ordered something else instead.  Lori had this very lurid blue cocktail (I think she was trying to match the color of her fingertips) and I chose the Oregon pinot noir tasting flight.  Deee-lis-cious.  

Suitably reinvigorated, it was finally time to go check into the hotel.  Although check-in was at 3pm and it was already 4pm, our room wasn't quite ready, so instead the check-in lady invited us to take a seat in the bar, with the first drink on the house to wait.  Well, sure.  No problemo.   Happy to oblige.  In the end, we were only waiting about 10mins, but a glass of free champers took the edge off that delay quite nicely.

Portland.  The city where anything is possible.

Anyway, finally we got up to the room - a double queen with pretty decent views of the city below and was very nice indeed.  We had arranged to meet Lori's folks at 6.30pm, so had just under 2hrs to chill out in - so i may have perhaps just dropped off for a quick snooze maybe for just a minute or so.   Fortunately, i'd just so happened to set my alarm in case of such an improbably unlikely event, so it was soon time to get ready to go out and meet the family.  Obviously i'd met Lori's mum, Cheri, a number of times before but had only spoken to her papa, Greg, once on the phone and had never met Greg's son, Shon.

We had an absolute blast.  Greg came to pick us up in his ENORMOUS truck (which was fun to get in and out of in heels!) and we headed off to one of the oldest and best restaurants in Portland, a place called Huber's.  Now, rather than be just another traditional steakhouse, Huber's is distinctive in that it specializes in turkey dinners!  Yep, every day is Thanksgiving at Huber's - and jolly bloody tasty it was too!!  I actually ended up having the turkey marsala which was delicious and all of us left with very full tummies and even bigger grins on our faces.  It was a great evening and it was so much fun to spend time with Lori's family, ribbing Shon about his love of American football (rather than a real man's game like rugby), getting to know Greg and getting a big hug from my second mom, Cheri.  Thank you, for taking me into your family and into your hearts - you guys rock.

My Portland family!
And, no, I hadn't collapsed on the floor
with Lori helping me up.

Not sure what's going on with the posing in this
one - and why I have zombie eyes.
But we all look adorable anyway.

I really need to have a chat with Lori to tell her
to lighten up on the bling when going out
for the evening... such a delicate subject....

After dinner, Greg and the gang dropped Lori and I back at the hotel and they headed off home.  It was still relatively early, so we decided to explore a bit more and ended up in this really cool bar called Urban Farmer.  It had a very Manhattan vibe (without the arsiness), so it was the perfect spot to just sit, chill out and talk about life, the universe and everything.  And, after about an hour or so, we'd actually solved all the world's problems, so all that was left to do was to wend our (slightly) merry way home, sing songs in our hotel room loudly enough to warrant a tap on the door (oops) before finally calling it a night.  All that was left to do tomorrow, was to drive to the airport, give back the M&M mobile and fly home to SF (again, free upgrade to 1st!) and reflect on what a thoroughly FABULOUS trip to Portland it had been.  It proved that it was, indeed, well worth the wait and I can't wait to go back and visit again.