Portland

At the end of August, Troway and I traveled to the states for a couple of weeks. My sister and her husband joined us on the West Coast, so they did most of the planning, and we did not realize until we got there how much they were able to plan into just a few days.

We spent our first two day in Portland, Oregon, hanging out with family and seeing great sights around the city (and eating delicious food!). After a hearty American breakfast at a pancake house (where we had an interesting time finding ingredients that should not have have been in our order, such as cheese on my waffle, chicken in the veggie omelet, and tomato in the hashbrowns), we headed to the riverfront for the Saturday market. After living across the street from the Naschmarkt in Vienna, I thought I knew what an impressive market was, but this was may have it beat. If you could name it, you could pretty much buy it at this market I think. One entire street was devoted to food vendors. A stage at one end of this street provided entertainment in the form of what may or may not have been a garage band, all wearing hawaiian shirts :) Arts and crafts were everywhere, but that was only the beginning. I am guessing we saw maybe half of it, but that is probably stretching it. We enjoyed the mask table the boys found, and sampled an elephant ear, which is a giant fried deliciousness.

One end of the market

Riverfront

Cool/crazy/scary masks

Elephant ear!

As if the above mentioned treat was not enough sugar to keep us going for the day, we made our way to Voodoo Donuts, which is one of the must-dos for Portland. They specialize in creative, over-the-top donut creations, and it comes in a pink box, which is clearly the best way to get your donuts. There was a bit of a line to get in, so we had time to admire the bricks of the Voodoo Donut building which were painted with sparkles.

Our last major stop in Portland was the Rose Garden. It is part of a botanical garden so huge it has its own shuttle system. The Rose Garden itself took an entire afternoon to explore, and we probably could have lingered much longer. There is also a zoo, a Japanese garden, a forest, and several other options, if you have a couple of weeks to explore the entire area.