Portland, Oregon

So Hotwire.com works! For those who don't know the process, you go to Hotwire.com and pick a city, hotel rating, then pay... all before you really know what hotel you'll be spending the night in. For us, this worked out really well! For $59, Hotwire put us at the DoubleTree Inn which is located just over the water from center city, Portland. It was about a 5 minute ride on the light rail from the station located directly next to the hotel and was about $20-$30 less than other hotels in the area! Oh, did I mention the light rail in this area is FREE?? Upon arrival at the hotel, we were greeted, presented two warm cookies, and offered 50% of their parking rate! Portland was already looking great!

Time was only 10:30PM at this point so we decided to clean up and get into the city to check out the night life. We got on the light rail and jumped off right by the coolest place ever... a Barcade! Yes, this place is a Bar and an Arcade with all the classic games; Simpsons, Rampage, pinball machines, Cruising World, and tons more-- plus they were only 25 or 50 cents to play! Loving this city!

Next morning, hungry, we ventured back into the city to find the well known Voodoo Doughnuts. This is quite a unique doughnut shop, with toppings such as Bacon-Maple and Oreo Peanut-Butter, there's something for everyone. We grabbed two Bacon-Maple, One Old Dirty Bastard (Peanut-Butter & Oreo), and a Portland Cream. WAY TOO MUCH SUGAR! After eating most of the four doughnuts, which were amazing, we felt sick for over an hour.

Attempting to walk off some of the sugar we started North to Nike Town, which

was described to us asa kind of Nike museum. Once inside we met employee Sean and found out that most of the original Nike memorabilia had been moved to their main campus, not available to the general public. Turns out this location is now just described as their first Nike store. But meeting Sean really helped us out, he turned into our personal concierge to the City of Portland. We asked Sean where we could get some good food and find some local beer, Sean quickly grabbed a few maps and a highlighter to point out key places we should hit. He helped us find a few local breweries and pointed out the main locations for Portland's famous food carts. Thanks Sean!

One of Sean's suggestions was Henry's 12th Street Tavern which we decided to hit first to sample Portland's beer selection. On our walk to the Tavern we stopped at Powell's Book Store which has to be the largest book store I've ever seen, I used the bathroom and we moved on.

Now at Henry's we sat down at the bar and admired their selection of local brews and the frozen track on their bar designed to keep your beer cold. The bartender asked if we'd like to sample anything, we asked to try the Widner W'10th Pitch Black IPA from Portland which was supposed to have a peppery flavor.. to us, it just tasted like an average stout without any peppery flavor. After the sample, I chose Eugene City Brewery's Honey-Orange Wheat and Kyle chose the Hopworks Urban Brewery Organic, both beers brewed in Oregon.

Liquid lunch complete, Kyle and I parted ways for a little bit as he visited the Chinese Garden and I ventured around the city. During my exploration I stumbled upon the weirdest city block party ever. Imagine about 50 people standing around watching a girl very poorly belly dance while some guy walked around handing out peaches and someone else made grilled cheese sandwiches, also add in there a bunch of people in various stages of sleep sitting and laying against the nearest shaded area. Weird.

Kyle and I eventually reconvened for a late lunch at Korean Twist, a food cart that served up very delicious Bulgogi Burritos and pot stickers! Thanks for having us Portland!