Visiting Oregon: Eugene and Portland

We finally left California on the 15th of April, after spending a total of four and a half months in the state. We headed up towards Portland, and decided to spend a night in Eugene. It's a cool place, but almost completely a college town. We arrived in the afternoon on the 16th and Ben walked around with Bebe for about an hour while I napped. The two of us walked around some more to a few used record stores and hobby shops. We still didn't want to pay for any lodging, so we found a Walmart fairly well outside the center of town and parked for the night.

Ben had seen a bar on the way to the Walmart that he was sure was just a half mile down the road. It had pool and karaoke, and while neither of us ever gets drunk enough to sing in public, we do enjoy Ben beating my sorry butt at pool. Plus, there were $1.50 PBR pints! And the rum and ginger ale (a fake Dark and Stormy) was only $2.50! Of course, before we could enjoy ourselves, we had to get there, and walking was pretty much our best option (we didn't really know where the busses went). It turned out to be a 25-30 minute walk, which wasn't too bad, but we kept wondering if maybe it was 2 or 3 miles down the road... We decided to take a bus back, after the bartender let us borrow a bus map and schedule booklet.

The next day we knew there was a farmer's market happening, so we drove downtown and walked around with Bebe. Dogs are generally not allowed at open food markets, so we had to put Bebe in my backpack. She wasn't crazy about it, but put up with it for a good 25 minutes, before I finally took her out and carried her; and let me tell you 10 pounds gets pretty heavy after a pretty short amount of time in your arms. Kudos to all the moms who have carried or do carry around their babies regularly! We picked up some nice produce at the market, and then found this sublime El Salvadorian tamale that had a huge list of ingredients: prunes, chicken, peppers, tomatoes, raisins, and more that we can't remember, topped with sour cream and really spicy salsa. It was expensive ($8!) but it fed both of us for a small lunch and was so delicious.

We left that afternoon (17th) to get on our way to Portland. We didn't get the whole way, because we got a late start, but we arrived the next day to stay with Ben's brother Aaron's friend from college, Aimee, and her boyfriend, Kyle. And their dog, Poopay (I know I spelled that wrong, but that's at least the phonetic spelling...). Bebe was pretty freaked out of Poopay at first, but after a day they were running around the yard playing a ton.

We stayed a whole week in Portland, and we absolutely LOVED IT! There's a great food scene there, with a lot of restaurants and a great appreciation for them. It's a somewhat spread out city with a bunch of different neighborhoods, all with their own vibe. The public transportation is awesome (probably our first experience with very user-friendly transit on the whole trip), and they even have a "fareless square" which is a several block radius in which all transit trips are free! As reputed, Portland was a bike-friendly city, and we took full advantage of it. Aimee and Kyle were about a mile or so from downtown, so we biked back and forth a few times. Of course we went to Powell's Bookstore, but we were disappointed in the organization of the store in general, and the selection of used food literature books in particular. All the books are thrown together, used, new and discount, so it can be difficult if you only want to buy cheap books (like us). I found two books I wanted that were about $5 each, but Ben ended up buying a new book. We have too many books with us. There is a really nice waterfront park on the Willamette River that was great for people-watching. We spent part of a day there and enjoyed a couple of donuts from Voodoo Donuts (an awesomely delicious and creative donut shop that has a line all day long) before playing catch.

Ben staged at Le Pigeon for three days, and we got a completely comped meal, including wine pairings! It was quite good, and awesomely free, but none of it really blew us away until the dessert. I got a creme brulee which was just a regular creme brulee, but it also came with a bonus pot de creme (yes, the dessert menu actually said "bonus pot de creme") that was incredible. It was nice to end the meal like that. Our final culinary experience in Portland was at Pokpok, a Vietnamese/Thai restaurant that had a short menu of exotic sounding entrees and salads. Ben will write more about it, but I will say we really loved it, and again the dessert was incredible.

On the 26th we got up early, took Bebe to the vet (she somehow got pretty sick) and after a shot and some antibiotics, we hit the road to head to Seattle, to visit with our friends Keith and Sara. We were pretty sad to leave Portland, and it's definitely second (or tied for first) on our short list of cities we'd like to live in. We will write about Seattle and our Vancouver adventure as soon as we get the chance. Current trip stats: almost 9000 miles and almost 1000 gallons of gas!

-Lily