We woke up to an unusual sight; the sun in Portland! It was really hard pulling ourselves out of bed (even though it was around 10am before we even attempted to move). We decided that we were going to try to take it easy in the morning of our second day, since we booked an “eating and walking” tour for the afternoon. After a slow start, we made our way to the Flying Elephant, which is probably our favorite quick stop which has the yummiest and freshest foods that you could want, and such a variety! We got green chile enchiladas and mac and cheese (which sounds weird, but was a really great combination of pseudo-lunch food). We wanted to save our appetites for the tour later, so we tried to keep our eating to a minimum. And since the weather was super pretty, we walked around a new part of town, which we had never been to before.

We travelled to the Southwest part of the city (which we will dub quadrant 1), and also probably our favorite. If we ever decided to move, I think this is where we would live. We started going through this extremely long park in the middle of the city, covered in massive trees and flowers and statues (quite beautiful!). After a few blocks, we noticed that there was a bunch of commotion about 200 feet in front of us, and realized quickly that we stumbled upon one of the many wonders of Portland. It was the infamous Saturday Farmers Market (which only happens every saturday during the spring/summer). And let me just say, it blows every other farmer’s market to dust – nothing would compare! (well maybe the Bolder Boulder, for those of you readers who know what this is, but a lot less crazy). It was crazy awesome…there were TONS of fresh veggies, meats, food carts, gorgeous flowers, plants and live music. It was also set in the Portland State College campus (which is really cool). If we weren’t about to eat for the next 4 hours, we would have dabbled in the food…and probably bought tons of the fresh foods if we lived there (although now we know that when we move to Portland, this will probably be a staple for us!). It was shocking how much fresh foods that they can pull out of the ground in Portland, but I must say that we were impressed (and coming from Boulder, that is saying something).

After about an hour, we headed back to our tour meet-up, which happened to be located right behind our hotel (nice and convenient)! We met with our group of 11 other people for our eating/walking tour. Our tour guide, Herb, was really fun and jovial – he was an improv comedian and also made some acting debut on a few smaller indy films that were released in Portland, so needless to say, he was very entertaining. We also learned TONS about the city, about food, and about why Portland is such an amazing place. Our first stop was to a structure (for lack of a better word) that looks like four mini-drinking fountains, which are called Benson Fountains….and the cool thing is that these structures are ALL OVER the city, to showcase Portland’s number one most cherished natural resource, water. The water in Portland is of such high quality that they display it everywhere. You may also find it interesting that Portland is not even a top contender in the amount of rain it gets per year, but it does rain a lot, just not for a long amount of time. Because of the water, the food, the beer, the baking is probably some of the best in the world….sidenote: Portland has more Brewery’s than any other place in the world (Even Germany!).

So anyways, we went to 10 different locations, about half of them were restaurants and the other half were food specialty shoppe’s like tea and spices, oil and vinegar (which is actually amazing and delicious) and coffee, beer, and wine. We learned so many fun things about the city, and all in all got to eat the following: duck ravioli with butter creme sauce, and fried chicken liver over arugula, fresh greens and balsamic glaze, ham and gruyere cheese crepes, orange & tomato soup, french onion soup, bruschetta topped with brie, grapes, and a honey glaze sauce, chickpea french fries with squash ketchup, asparagus, fennel and cream cheese pizza, mocha dutch mousse with wildberry ice cream, and a variety of spices and oil/vinegar tastings (which may sound gross but was so good you would be shocked!). We also got to drink a lot on our tour – lots of booze. The wine was out of this world (and I don’t even like wine) and of course the beer…well it is the best beer in the world. We also learned a lot about the city, why the blocks are so small, why there is so much art and nature interspersed throughout, and how the city is practically number 1 on the sustainability level (which includes a lot of the restaurants we toured). They use over 80% of locally grown produce/meat in their restaurants, have almost no waste and are some of the greatest chefs in the world.

After we ended our tour, we were actually on the Northwest side of town (dubbed quadrant 2) known as the “Pearl District.” This area would rival the Wicker-Park area of Chicago…all the buildings were gorgeous and modern and tons of boutique stores, shoppes, restaurants and TONS of parks interspersed….and GORGEOUS parks…not the shabby little tiny parks that some people may be thinking – I’m talking HUGE parks with fountains and structures that are not only beautiful from an architectural standpoint, but also functional. Tons of kids playing in the fountain square areas, tons of people with dogs….very posh. The beauty of Portland, is that it is a very large city made super easy to navigate because of the transit system…the Lite Rail – its so easy to get from one side of town to the opposite in less than 10 minutes…with no car.

We explored the Pearl District a bit, and then decided that we were going to hit up the old VooDoo donuts, the one we actually did get married in. But, the location was on the Northeast part of town (dubbed quadrant 3), and we were still in 2…so we hit up a train and then walked about 4 blocks to VooDoo, which had a line out the door. We waited for about an hour for our 5 measly donuts (although they were worth it!) which we savored for a few days since we didn’t want to make the trek back there before we left. It was almost the same, except they moved a lot of the furniture to accommodate the crowds, and they changed one of the arcade games from Jaws to Pirates of the Caribbean, but otherwise it was the same as ever. But my god it was crazy to see so many people there…and its always like that…tons of tourists and locals craving a delish donut or twelve.

We finally made it back to our hotel by 8pm after all of this, and we were totally exhausted. We didn’t eat any dinner since we ate all day, and ate a lot…so we laid around and watched the city from our room. It wasn’t an “early night” but definitely early for us since we were pretty much passed out by 10pm. All-in-all – a great second day in Portland!

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