Road Trip v.2 (Part 1): Portland

It's inevitable that I'm going to be woefully behind on updating my road trip adventures. I'm actually sitting in San Francisco right now, a full week into the trip. I also have a gagillion pictures to go through on my camera to add to the posts, so bear with me.

Doughnut Massacre

The trip started in Portland where I picked up Kim from the airport. Living only an hour from the city and having done several farmers markets there, I was familiar with Portland. But there was still room for lots of new adventures. We did the usual: Voodoo Doughnuts and tramped about in a few brew pubs (including one that was housed in an old school that looked eerily like our old high school inside). We ate at Old Towne Pizza, which is reportedly in a haunted building, and got our Halloween fix. We even classed it up and visited Pittock Mansion and Powell's Bookstore the second day. The best thing of the visit...and perhaps the best thing I ever did...was the walking food tour we did on Saturday. 

The mascot of our trip.
Fatty monster has an owwie
in his belly. We can relate.

I'd seen walking food tours in Seattle and other cities before and was a bit nervous that they would be an embarrassing event, following a flag-bearing tour guide and annoyingly clogging up the sidewalks for locals. It was actually an authentic visit with a small-ish group to a normal Portland neighborhood that I'd visited before. Little did I know how many food gems were hidden there. The stops included a coffee shop, a salt store, a food cart, a coffee brewing store, a brew pub, a bakery, and a taqueria. It was intense. Every time we thought it was our last stop, there was one more. We stuffed our faces and it was glorious. Not a single item was bad, and some were melt-your-face-off amazing. After the food tour had ended, we went and ate more at the Ruby Jewel ice cream shop (home of the best ice cream sandwich ever). Then, we made an attempt to eat more at Pine State Biscuits, but unfortunately (or perhaps fortunately for our bellies), it was closed. Disappointed and relieved, we commenced our trip to Eugene where we would rest up before hitting the Oregon coast.