Let’s always remember the good times
Steve Martin and The Steep Canyon Rangers
We made it to our 6th NPS site today, but the big discovery of the day was the city of Portland. Of course, it’s hard to have a bad start to the day when it begins with sleeping in and Kimpton coffee. After enjoying a few cups while catching up on posting pictures from our time at Crater Lake we headed for our first destination of the day: VooDoo Donuts.
I think we’ve tasted just about every donut in Chicago during the weekends we’ve spent there. We took the closing of Glazed and Infused personally. For some reason in all our travels we haven’t found a city that took its donut culture as seriously as Chicago until now. Portland is home to several spots we’re hoping to check out while we’re here. Supposedly VooDoo is the “best”, but we’ve also heard over and over that it’s the tourist best so we’ll have to do more tasting the next couple days to decide for sure.
As we started getting close we began noticing groups of hungry people carrying large pink boxes and we could only salivate with thoughts of the delights they contained. Finally, the shop came into view and the line stretched out the door and around the side of the building. This gave us time to make our selections as we studied the collection of photos on the side of the building. The one I knew we needed to try was the VooDoo donut – a voodoo doll shaped donut filled with strawberry jelly and a stake through its heart. Eventually our turn came and we rounded out our supply with a Portland custard, an old fashioned, a choclate monstrisity called the “Old Dirty Bastard” (we let Zoe order so she’d need to ask for this), and more. I’m happy to report that they lived up to the hype. Not Glazed and Infused good, but certainly DoRite good.
The area of the city we’re staying in is filled with cute shops and restaurants so our next move was to start wondering the streets in search of the best places to check out. There were lots of great spots, but I had two favorites. First, City Home Portland (https://cityhomepdx.com/) had an awesome collection of furniture and decor. We found the perfect table for CO home; a roughly cut and finished wood top with simple iron legs that Molly and I both agreed on. If I’d had a place to store it for two year I would have bought it. Second, Boys Fort (https://boysfort.com/). It was just like all those botique little shops for women, but with man stuff. There should be more stores like this everywhere.
This post is going to be food heavy, because if we don’t hike we eat, apologies up front. After checking out of the Monaco we headed to our next stop, a rare delicacy no longer available in Chicago: Baja Fresh. There are certain chains we seek out when in other parts of the country. Normally I do a little searching to see if we’ll cross paths with any of them, but this one caught us by surprise as we were coming into town. We think it’s been four years since we’d eaten there, and it lived up to our memories completely.
Finally it was time to head to the Fort Vancouver’s Mclaughlin House unit for a little history. When we got there we had a bit of a wait for the tour to start so we sat in the courtyard and the girls worked on their Jr. Ranger badge. When the time came we met up with a volunteer and a couple other familes and learned about the huge role Mr. Mclaughlin played in settling the West. He also owned a couch made from horse hair.
With wine hour approaching we returned to downtown Portland and the Kimpton Hotel Vintage. We were pleasantly surprised when we were told we’d been upgraded to the “comicly large” suite. Awesome! She was right, this is one of the biggest rooms we’ve ever seen. I don’t think I’ll do it justice in word. I think the girls made a video tour and Molly will have pictures, so check those out. There are two stories, two bathrooms, a bar, a tub the size of a small pool. There are enough closets and other miscelanious spaces that I couldn’t find Ellie when it was time to go to wine hour. That inspired the girls to play a legitimate game of hide and seek – in a hotel room.
As the girls were hide and seeking Molly and I enjoyed drinks and live music during wine hour. We did tell the girls to come join us when we ordered the garlic-parmesean-lemon fries. Molly and I also spent a bit of time playing tabletop shuffleboard in the game room before heading back upstairs. We also decided that we would need to have a date night in Il Solil, the hotel’s Italian restaurant. We set the girls up with food from their choice of truck (these are everywhere in Portland), and then went downstairs for some of the best spagetti and meatballs we’ve ever had.