Portland

We got home from our 2 weeks in Ireland, stayed home for 2 days, then we were off again to Portland, Oregon.  I am a member of the Handcrafted Soapmakers Guild, and they were having a conference.  Tim and I had always wanted to visit Portland, so we decided to make this part of our honeymoon.  I feel kinda silly saying that, who goes to a soap conference for 3 days spent without your new husband, but there it was.  I went to the conference in Miami last year and really enjoyed it, so i wanted to go again.  The plans were made for this before I got laid off, otherwise I would have done things differently, but there you are.  


We watch a lot of food shows, Tim is a bit of a foodie, loves micro brews as well, Portland is always featured, so we were excited to go.  Tim would have things to do while I was in the conference, it would be great.  We got there before the conference started, so we had a few days to explore together.  Our hotel was the Red Lion On the River, I didn't realize how far from downtown that was until we got there.  We didn't rent a car, we were planning on using public transit.  When you go to a different city and use the bus system, it points out how good our system is here in Ottawa.  In Portland, I got the vibe that the bus wasn't the people of Portland's first choice of transportation.  It took almost a hour on the bus to get from our hotel to downtown.  I was also surprised on how spread out things were.  It was very nice that everything was on a grid, but you really had to know where you were going if you wanted to see something cool.  We had heard about  Voodoo Doughnuts, so that was our breakfast the first day.  

A Oreo peanut butter doughnut, Maple Bacon doughnut, and the Voodoo Doll Doughnut.  Their doughnuts are bigger than "normal", it was impossible for the two of us to finish them, we ha d a sugar high for the rest of the day.

The other thing we had always heard about was the food trucks.  We just don't have anything like this, I blame the winter.  Portland had blocks of them!  It was really neat, everything from organic pizza to Thai, to hot dogs.  

This is a burger, topped with a fried egg, between two grill cheeses.  

These are dumplings, from the Dump Truck, but not your regular fillings.  We had cheese burger, pork, Asian and Thai.  These in the picture are there dessert dumplings with a berry filling.  Everything was really good, and a great price!

We went to the Rose Test Garden, I did not realize that it would be a bit of a climb to get there.  My legs were sore for days.  The roses weren't in bloom, but it was cool none the less.

  

We of course went to yarn stores, the knitting scene is big in Portland.  We tried to hit a bunch to name a few Twisted and The Yarn Garden.  We only had Monday and Tuesday to shop, otherwise we would have gone to Yarnia, you can make your own yarn!  We went to the button emporium!  I have heard so many things about it, it was very cool to get to go.  This is what we picked up there:

I just LOVED the 3 Mucha ladies!  I'm not sure what to do with them, but I just couldn't let buttons with my favorite artist go.  The shoe and sheep were also a must.  

Then I spend 3 days at the conference, learned a lot, met some really nice people, had a great time!  I'm all inspired to take my soap making business further and try some new things.  Can't wait for next year!