Portland: The one in Oregon, not Maine

We arrived to Portland bringing the rain from our drive along with us. Before heading over to our Airbnb, we stopped by North Edison Street & Pittsburg Ave to get a perfect view of St. John’s Bridge. Afterwards, we headed to our Airbnb and I kept missing the exit, so we went back and forth on the bridge probably about five or six times?

It was downpouring by the time we pulled up to the home. We were staying on an uphill incline, so that was pretty scary with the pouring rain. Fortunately, I was able to get a parking space right in front of our Airbnb, so we quickly unpacked the car and ran into the apartment. I booked us a shared apartment west of the river. The family we stayed with was so pleasant and primarily lived in the basement, where we stayed upstairs with our own bathroom and access to the kitchen.

We only had the evening we arrived and a full day in Portland. I didn’t realize how exhausted I would be from driving - granted, it was the first full day of leaving a city, driving a mini hike, and arriving to a new city. There was a lot to take in.

Eventually, the rain stopped, and we were able to step out to the back patio and see that we had a gorgeous view of Portland’s skyline. We were quite fortunate to watch the rainy clouds roll away and the setting sun shining against the misty clouds.

We were pretty hungry, and stopped into Short Round for an okay bowl of pho that satisfied our cravings for something warm and noodle soup after a terribly rainy day, and then went food shopping to grab some fruit and other goods. We were preparing for a very long day of driving after our full day in Portland, heading from Portland to San Francisco, and knew that food along the way would be difficult to find. Jen had the great idea of making sandwiches all day, so we grabbed a loaf of bread, some cold cut turkey slices, gouda cheese, and a bag of spinach, and saved that for our sandwich assembly line the next day.

The next day, we first headed over to Blue Star Donuts. We were told this was a better spot than Voodoo Donuts — I didn’t head to Voodoo, so I can’t exactly compare between the two, but I can say that the donuts we got were quite yummy. Then headed to Tasty n Sons to share a breakfast board, consisting of chicken liver mousse, labneh, pickled beets, apples, applewood smoked bacon, house beef jerky, six minute egg. Simple but delicious. After our board, we were pretty full of having back to back donuts and breakfast board pairings, so we took a break and went on a street art hunt, but somehow found ourselves heading into Salt & Straw for ice cream when we wandered N. Alberta. The smell of the freshly made waffle cones really drew us in.

After street art hunting, we stopped over to Olympia Provisions and enjoyed some wine, a cheese board, and a charcuterie board and relaxed a bit. We grabbed sandwiches to go to have for dinner - my cousin and I decided to have an early night because we were going to wake up at 5 AM the next day to head back on the road to San Francisco.

We got back to the Airbnb, made our bag-full of sandwiches for our day on the road, watched a few movies on Netflix, and promptly passed out.

It was a short visit to Portland, and I find myself needing to go back specifically to explore the cocktail scene in the city, but we saw enough for the pitstop on our west coast drive.

West Coast Road Trip Series