Portland August 2019

Prior to my family moving to the Portland area at the end of last year / the beginning of this year I had never even crossed through Oregon. Since their move I have been up there three times. It was a bit cold during the first visit in January (my eldest son inexplicably was wearing shorts while I was dressed like a snow storm was on the horizon) but for anyone who wants to get away from places with disgusting summers (Arizona, Nevada, etc.) I have to choose Portland, San Francisco and the Seattle area as the best weather destinations (of the places I have visited). One reason I had never gone to Portland previously was that in looking up the different "attractions" in the area there were some items of interest but nothing which justified the cost of airfare and/or a 3 hour flight. After checking some of the city out; however, there are some pretty cool things to see.

The downtown area is easily accessible from the airport by the light-rail / MAX, which has a station right outside the terminal. It takes about 40 minutes to get downtown. One thing to be aware of is that there is a huge homeless population in the downtown area. This shouldn't deter any visits there but just be prepared as I was not fully aware of the situation prior to my first visit there. After going to the Lan Su Chinese Garden (https://lansugarden.org/) during our first trip to the city it has become a bit of a staple place to visit. It can easily be viewed within an hour but the highlight of garden for me is the tea house. This is a full service tea house with a great array of tea choices as well as snacks and other drink options. I was particularly thrilled to see that they served moon cakes. After ordering a box of moon cakes released by Starbucks in China for the Mid-Autumn Festival a few years ago I have always been on the search for economical ways to get moon cakes. Unfortunately, they (like the Japanese Kit Kats) are not extremely easy to get in the states unless you are willing to dish out a lot of money for shipping costs. Even then, the moon cakes only seem to pop-up online during the festival season. For those who have never tried the awesomeness of a moon cake, it is a pastry which has different fillings (red bean, taro, and lotus are three versions served at the garden). I have found that the best place to purchase moon cakes, or any other Asian-related items, online is through Yamibuy, which usually offers free shipping (if your purchases exceed a certain amount).

In walking distance from the garden is the first Voodoo Doughnut location. https://www.voodoodoughnut.com/

Incidentally, there is also an Afuri (https://afuri.us/) in Portland, which is about 100 feet from Voodoo Doughnuts. Although we passed the Afuri during our previous visits it wasn't until our Tokyo trip (see prior post) and looking on their website that it dawned upon me that it was the same place where we ate ramen a few times in Japan. Apparently Portland is the only Afuri location in the US (at the moment) with an article giving indication that it is due to Portland having the right water for the broth. Although the Portland Afuri location is much larger than the locations we visited in Tokyo (those pretty much consisted of a middle cooking area surround by counter seating only) and their food choices were a bit different, it was still a really good meal and there are vegetarian/vegan options, which always makes things easy for me. One really nice difference with the Portland location is that they serve dumplings. The vegan miso cashew gyoza dumplings were fantastic - even my meat-eating son thought so.

Once you are done with Afuri I would recommend heading up the street to Stumptown, which is a pretty big coffee chain in the area. It was during this trip that I tried my first kombucha. I read about it numerous times previously but never thought to purchase it. My niece somehow talked me out of getting some lavender mixture flavor I was eyeing so I ended up with a peach flavor instead. I'm not big on sweet drinks so its tartness was definitely something I would drink on a regular basis.

McMinnville is about 45 minutes from Portland but I highly recommend heading out there to see the Evergreen Aviation and Air & Space Museum (https://www.evergreenmuseum.org/). For those who aren't aware, it is where the famous Howard Hughes plane the "Spruce Goose" is located. My youngest son starts college this year for his aerospace engineering degree so I had him watch The Aviator a few months ago and in turn he became very interested to see the plane. It really is an enormous / fantastic plane to see in person but the museum in general is pretty awesome as it has a lot of complete aircraft from different decades. It easily could take a day or more to get through both the air museum and space museum (which are across from each other, on either side of the parking lot).

We also noticed that there is a separate water park in which a plane sits directly on top of the building. You can't notice from this photos but the water tubes come directly out of the plane.

One forewarning about the Hughes plane, which was not made completely clear at the front desk, is that the only way to visit the cockpit is to purchase a time slot, which allows for 4 people. Unfortunately, we were too late / all of the slots filled up by the time we found out the logistics. Regardless, you are still able to enter the hull of the aircraft for photos and whatnot.

We didn't check out too much of McMinnville but it has a cool, old town feel to it. We ate a McMenamins , which was in an old hotel. I was not familiar with the company prior to visiting Oregon but if you are in the state (or Washington) check them out as they convert old, historic buildings into things like restaurants and move theaters. They even have their own coffee and breweries. https://www.mcmenamins.com/

Interestingly, in the Space Museum there was a section of the Berlin Wall.

Prior to heading to the airport we went to an area of town which has a cool coffee shop called The Dragonfly Coffee House and an authentic French restaurant (St. Honore Bakery), which is fantastic. We are heading back to the Portland area in December and am curious to see what the downtown area looks like during the holidays.

https://www.sainthonorebakery.com/

http://www.thedragonflycoffeehouse.com/

Next up : Seattle