No Coffee in Portland!?!?

Now on to quite possibly Katie's most anticipated stop, Portland. We arrived late around 10p.m. to Dustin and Alyssa's place on Monday because of our unexpected detour in the Ape Caves. Alyssa was still at work, but we hung out with Dustin and their roommate Sarah late into the night, just watching TV, which was a nice change from our busy schedule. We woke up leisurely in the morning and headed into the city to do some exploring. Dustin gave us directions so that we could park close enough to downtown to get within the free ride zone which meant that we would have free public transit all day, though we would only use it getting in and out of the city proper. The Portland area was so small that we could easily walk anywhere we wanted to go once we had gotten down there. We hopped on the train and headed into the city. Our first destination was lunch. Katie had found a Thai restaurant online the night before and it was my job to get us there. After overshooting our intended bus stop by about 3 stops, we got off, gathered our bearings and began to walk in the direction of the restaurant when we passed by it. I knew that we were not in the right location but Katie insisted that this was the name of the place that she looked up: Typhoon! It turned

out that we were both right as the restaurant was a mini chain that had about 7 locations scattered throughout Portland. We got some menus and sat outside enjoying the beautiful overcast day. It was nice to eat outside and we got to people watch as we ate our delicious meal. Our bellies stuffed, we made for our next destination, Powell's Books, which claims to be the largest

independent new and used book store in the world. We walked around inside for a bit, browsing all of the books, while looking for various editions of Steinbeck and Tolkien, basically just having fun in a book store. Katie decided that she was going to read the entire Tales of Beedle the Bard while at Powell's. This book is very short and only took her about an hour and a half to read. I began reading a book which I picked out that was soon to be mine as well as browsed around enjoying the extensive collection while waiting for her to finish. After Katie had finished, we purchased some books and went back to the streets. We walked around a bit more

until we stumbled upon, get ready Nate, the infamous Voodoo Doughnuts! We had heard about this place from our host Dustin. He had said that before he moved to Portland, if he brought it up to anyone, they would say "you have to go to Voodoo Doughnuts" and so he told us the same. We were not disappointed. Luckily, there was relatively no line. We had heard from Dustin that the usual wait is about an hour, but it would be worth every minute to wait for it. We waited about 5 minutes and it was definitely worth waiting every minute of that. I got a doughnut that was

covered in Cap'n Crunch while Katie had something that looked like it came to life out of the Simpson's movie, blue frosting with pink sprinkles. They were both excellent, gone in seconds, not to mention cheap! We both knew immediately that we would be back for seconds later in the night. Next we headed to another one of Dustin's recommendations, Ground Kontrol, a

Barcade as he liked to call it. This place is stuffed full of late 80's arcade games, basically everything that I grew up playing. Katie and I exchanged 5 bucks in quarters and went to town. We played everything from my youth, The Simpsons, X-Men, the original big buck hunter, Area 51, Rampage, Paperboy, Gauntlet Legends, Mortal Kombat, it was great. The best part is every game was only 25 cents to play, so we got to spend a lot of time there on very little cash. After Katie couldn't take it anymore we decided to again move locations, this time to a place called the Shanghai Tunnel. This is a bar that is located underneath another bar that acted as its front back in the day. You walk into the front bar and there is absolutely no one there except a door man who asks for your ID then directs you to the basement. You go to the back, down a creepy little staircase, and into this big basement that has been converted into a bar. Supposedly it used to

be an opium den which was connected to Portland's underground system of tunnels called the Shanghai Tunnels. It was a really unique atmosphere and we spent the rest of our evening down there again playing some more games in between dinner. Before hopping back on the free train to Dustin and Alyssa's, we called them and asked what kind of Voodoo Doughnuts they wanted. We made one more stop at this Portland landmark and came home with a half dozen doughnuts to share with everyone. We spent the rest of the night much like the first, just hanging out together and watching TV, talking about our travels as well as our day in the city. In the morning, our plan was to head south to California. We (Katie especially) did not want to leave Portland, or Oregon itself so quickly, but we had to make it to San Francisco for the weekend to catch a free bluegrass show, Hardly Strictly. We were planning on meeting Scott and Megan, our former hosts from Anchorage, down there to go to the show and we wanted to make sure we got there early. This plan gave us 2 days to make it from Portland to San Francisco; plenty of time to make the drive, but not nearly enough time to see all the sights. We promised to come back to Oregon and Portland once more after the concert, but for now, it was off to the Golden State. And can you believe it?!?!?! We visited Portland and didn't even stop at a coffee shop! :)