In Portland, I'm Youthful and Attractive

IDed three times during our stay, in a place where the minimum drinking age is 21. Admittedly, the requestor in every instance was persuadable that they didn't REALLY need to see ID for me*, but that doesn't prove that they ask everyone out of habit and that if I'd actually looked young they'd've been more insistent, as nasty wife suggested - rather, they were mesmerised by my youthful good looks. So there.

We liked Portland, a lot. If we'd managed to score rooms at the Kennedy School we'd probably still be there. Unfortunately(?) they were fully booked for the whole of the long weekend, as were all the other McMenniman's hotels** in the immediate vicinity, so we stayed just the one night, in an incredibly brightly-colored hotel. We'd tried to phone a few hotels, but failed to get payphones to work, so we figured we'd just go to Nob Hill, because how could we not? The Broadway Bridge was being reconstructed, so it took a while to cross, but we got to the west side, found a room, snuck our muddy bikes in over the balcony, and set off to see what we could see.

What we ended up seeing was Alice in Wonderland, which we'd tried to see in Auckland, and in Melbourne, and failed. Not unhappy about it, though, as seeing it in a weird little old theatre while drinking Terminator Stout was pretty awesome. Dinner at Jo Bar was pretty good (my mushroom sandwich) and awesome (Nene's Duck Duck Salad, which had duck and blue cheese and salady stuff), and dessert was awesome. All in all a great night. Then back to the flash hotel for a crap night's sleep in the king-size bed - Nene was too drunk to sleep, and I was too full of too-rich foods.

Next morning we hit Kettleman's Bagelry for breakfast, which turned out to be one of the most inspired food choices we've made so far. My grilled scrambled-egg-and-gruyere-cheese on a jalapeno bagel was stunning. Then onto the streetcar (free, and on which I found $2) for the trip into town, where we visited the Library (awesome staircase and study spaces), and the Art Museum, which had some really cool stuff****. Lunch at a Mexican place was followed by a trip to Powell's World of Books, which is a new-and-used bookshop spanning an entire city block, then takeaway coffee from a large man with a moustache at Anna Bananna's Coffee - I had hemp milk in mine, which was an interesting flavor. These were probably the best store-bought coffees we've had so far, which is at least partly down to how the barista interprets what the hell we're on about as we attempt to explain a flat white.

Drank our coffees on I84 heading east, leaving Portland wanting more of it.






* = I'd not taken my wallet out with me - I rather like this kept-man thing

** = McMenniman's is a Portland-based hospitality empire, with funky imagery and a yen for the quirky. I think it began with an independent brewery, followed by the opening of retail outlets for their (more or less delicious***) product, then beer- and food-enabled movie theatres, and and eventually a chain of boutique hotels, usually in decommissioned schools or other slightly odd buildings and covering not only the Portland area, but also Oregon and Washington states

*** = Terminator Stout and Hammerhead IPA were both more, vs Workingman's Red, which was less

**** = and some total crap