Let Me Esplain, No, Let Me Sum Up

The Rose City is awesome.  We were braut-, blues-, and beer-soaked...but it was the Fourth, and we were bound to maximize our time here.  If you know anything about us, you know this: our motto is Go Big Or Go Home.  And we're not ready to go home.

The morning of the 4th, we were a little groggy, but ready to hit the blues fest just across the street.  We took a quick tour of the food offerings and the various stages, then dug in.  Joe chose an enormous braut, and I chose a corn dog (it wasn't a Fletchers, but pretty dang good).  We also took a deep breath and started sipping beer.  It was Deschutes.  It was good.  It was cold.  We listened to a couple of bands, had a couple more beers, and walked/shopped our way through the merchandise kiosks.






Time for ice cream.  Technically, it's always time for ice cream, but in the moment, it seemed like a fabulous choice.  Mint Chocolate Chip and Rocky Road, if you must know.

At a beer overload tipping point, we headed for the hotel and some much-needed nap time before our dinner cruise on the river and fireworks.

The Portland Spirit is a little dinner cruise boat that holds about 150 grandparents and 50 other family members who like to do somewhat corny things.  The river scenery is gorgeous, the boat's not too bad, the dinner was okay, the service was terrible.  2.5 stars on Yelp, and certainly not worth the price.
On the other hand, we docked about a 100yds away from the barge shooting off all the fireworks.  The 30-minute show was awesome, and our vantage point hard to beat.

 



Editor's note: Next year, we're going to book the same hotel room (on the 12th floor) and watch from there...the barge is directly in front of the hotel.  THAT's how you do that.

On the 5th we were recovered enough to head straight to a brewery for lunch.  Breakside in Slabtown (NW of the metro) has great food and some pretty darn good stuff on tap.  From there we headed across the river to Ecliptic and on to Ex Novo.  Yes, my kidneys we def giving me the nudge to "Hydrate, Please!"


Breakside Brewery @ Slabtown



Chorizo and cream cheese stuffed poppers


Yummy braut


Flight at Ecliptic


Watermelon, avocado, jalapeno, pickled onion & cotija cheese salad @ Ex Novo



We met our Portland friends, Mary and Lou, for dinner back at Deschutes, and had such a good time catching up with them.  I'm hoping that we can travel with them again in the future.

As usual, when we travel, Joe's sinuses are causing problems,  This morning (now the 6th) I forbade him to drink today.  We still have more than a week to go on, and he needs to take a day off and medicate, rest, and otherwise get his shit together so that we can enjoy the rest of the trip!

So instead of drinking, we had a nice lunch and then spent two hours roaming around in Powell's books.  Absolute book nirvana.

We'll head to Salem tomorrow to see Mike and Martha.  AND we'll get back to drinking more beer!

Comments

  1. CindyJuly 7, 2017 at 5:42 AM

    I'm gaining weight just looking at these photos. Yum!

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Fighting Holiday Traffic and Finding the Mother Lode of Pacific Northwest IPAs

From a deep and restful slumber, we were rudely awakened by the fucking alarm clock at 4:45am.  Why so early for an 8:20 flight?  Because it's a holiday, it's DIA, it's Friday, and we're flying Southwest (where bags fly free but each passenger is charged a pound of flesh...and I am certain that if I had even one more pound of flesh on my body, I would NOT have fit into that middle seat). A small child made the second hour of the flight seem more like four hours.  Dear rugrat's mother, may I remind you, THIS IS AN AIRPLANE, NOT MCFUCKINGDONALD's PLAYLAND!  At the baggage claim, there was one carousel for three flights that arrived at the same time.  Chaos.  Another small child was standing at the conveyor belt making as if she were going to unload a couple of large bags by herself.  GET THE FUCK OUT OF THE WAY YOU STUPID LITTLE GNAT! Rental car buses were packed.  Thrifty could not find my reservation (they finally did).  The hour and a ha...
Read more

So Much Beer...So Little Time

Image
Wandering around downtown Olympia revealed a plethora of bars, breweries, eateries, and lovely scenery. The capitol building viewed from the lawn of Capitol Park. A maple tree viewed from the lawn (literally) of Capitol Park. Cassie (Debbie's dog) on the lawn of Capitol Park. Budd Bay viewed from The Oyster House. We hit the Oly Taproom, Cascadia Brewing, Eastside Tavern, the Oyster House, and O'Blarney's Irish Pub.  Each place was knee-deep with local craft beers, and we indulged...a lot.   Sad thing is, we didn't get to try sooo many of the offerings...not enough time, not enough brain cells to spare.  But...tomorrow is another day.   Brace yourselves.
Read more

Off to Cascadia!

Well, it's time again for summer vacation.  And this year - like the past two years - we're heading to the Pacific Northwest (PNW). We tried to fit Olympic National Park and Vancouver into this adventure, but there were several logistics playing against us.  We now have at least four groups of friends that we have to visit when we go...and getting all of their schedules AND ours to work together was just too much.  So, we'll save the park and lovely Vancouver for next year. Of course we'll go see Joe's sister, Debbie, in Olympia, WA (south of Seattle at the bottom of the sound).  Lou and Mary, who live in Dallas, have a summer home in Portland, so we'll hook up with them on the 5th.  Mike and Martha used to live in Denver, but he got a job in Salem, and we got a standing invitation.  Then there's Matt and Sheila just north of Victoria on Vancouver Island...also a standing invitation.  By the way, do you know that it's easier to get to Vancouver Isl...
Read more