Portland

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We got into Portland in the evening and met our host Val. In her profile picture on Couch Surfing she had a white wig and white face paint (taken at Burning Man perhaps?) so we weren't sure we'd recognise her. Thankfully she recognised us as we pulled up to the kerb. After a bit of a chat and unloading some stuff, she took us up to the local Japanese. It's very well known and even on a Wednesday night there was a queue and a 30-45min wait. We put our name on the queue and popped into a nearby bar to taste some of the local brews and chat about quantum psychology and other random things. One of the key aspects of Quantum Psychology is to do with defining or branding yourself or others. For example, if someone steals something, we would say that person IS a thief. But then, at what point do we no longer say that person IS a thief? If they never steal another thing, in ten years time are they still a thief? Robert Anton Wilson decided that we should strike defining words like "IS" from our language. So you could say the person stole something, but they aren't branded or labelled, which reduces the likelihood of them following that brand and continuuing to steal. Thievery is only one example - there are lots of ways in which labelling people is extremely harmful.

Anyway, back to the important stuff... The food was worth the wait - very tasty fresh sushi, delicious agedashi tofu, and yummy tempura veg udon. Apart from being of high quality, the other reason for its popularity is that it's not horrendously expensive (like a lot of Japanese places are). We spent around $12 each, and had a container of food to go home with as we were too full to finish it all. Back in the house, we gradually met all the other housemates. It was a large house, and there were a lot of people living there - maybe six all up. They were a friendly bunch, and one of the girls (Lauren) who had her own room, but generally slept in her boyfriends room elsewhere in the house, told us we could sleep in her bed. This was really generous, as she wasn't on couch surfing, and offered her room after only a quick chat. We sat in the backyard toasting marshmallows and playing bocce for a bit and then retired to bed.

Thursday morning, and Val had given us a bunch of things to see and do nearby. We still had our rental car, so we drove down to a nearby cafe/diner for breakfast. The cafe was very funny complete with hilarious descriptions of all the meals, amusing napkin drawn cartoons framed on the wall, and other funny things around the place. Service was friendly (and entertaining when one of the wait-staff upended a pile of water everywhere and told us that the other night he was bit in the head with a beer glass by one of the other waiters, while another one poured coffee down his back). Fun. Oh yeah - the food was good, and the coffee bottomless! Next stop was to have a wander around SE 13th street starting with a bike shop (of course!). The main reason for going there was to pick up some Monkeylectric bike lights. These are cool lights that go on your spokes and make patterns while you ride. Chris grabbed one and we spent another 30mins or so just looking around at the cool stuff. There was an awesome single speed matt black and purple Kona there, but we didn't want to deal with shippping it home (and single speeds are a bloody tough ride in hilly Hobart!). We walked a bit further up the street and found a few more shop worthy of perusal before dropping into a small Naturopathica for a look around. They had a wide range of teas and (very expensive) tinctures as well as some more esoteric witchcraft and palmistry stuff. We found some whole Tonka Beans which was kinda cool. Chris used to own some Tonka Bean essential oil - it's pretty amazing stuff and VERY hard to find. We didn't buy any though as we weren't sure if we could get it back into Tasmania.

We went home and ate our left over sushi next before heading up to one of the interesting shopping streets in NE Portland. We found a cutesy Japanese toy collector shop and a cool music shop, but then started to both get really tired. Not even the chocolate cake that Chris grabbed from a table in a cafe as we walked past helped lift our spirits (note: it wasn't stolen, the diners had finished and left a huge piece of yummy chocolate cake behind. Had to be eaten!). So, we drove home, and lay down for an afternoon nap which ended up extending for a couple of hours until around 7:30. We had planned to cook dinner together with Val, but she wasn't around so we went to the shops and bought some ingredients. We cooked up a stir-fry and when Val reappeard we watched Casablanca (despite knowing many of the famous lines, neither of us had actually watched the whole move before).

The first thing to do the next morning was to drop off our rental car. Actually, that was the second. The first was to clean all the crap out of it and get it ready to be dropped off. The return location was a hotel not too far away and from there we caught a bus into the city. We looked around some interesting shops and then went and grabbed a tasty lunch from a street cart. Street carts are a big thing in Portland as they are an easy way for someone to get a foot into the restaurant business without the huge initial outlay of setting up a restaurant. They are kinda like food carts you see at a market, but they are everywhere and have an amazing variety of food from Korean BBQ to Mexican to sushi to super healthy vego foods. Once we had our fill we bravely entered a famous local book store called Powells . It's three story high, very cheap and has second hand books mixed in with it's new books on the shelves. It was torture seeing all these good books but knowing we couldn't fit them in our luggage to take home. The variety of books on offer was fantastic. After wandering around for a while (and only buying a few books), we then wandered in to its other store which sells IT and Science books amongst others. We spent a bit longer in there and finally dragged ourselves away, feeling very jealous that Portlandians have such a great shop. We walked around the corner and spying a semi-decent looking camping/outdoors store we decided to take a peak. Wow - another amazing store. Great prices, and then a HUGE clearance section upstairs with a big range of clothing and shoes mostly under half price. A couple of hours later (and $650 less in the credit card) and we staggerred out carrying two new down sleeping bags and a pair of waterproof hiking boots for Chris. And the best thing is that there is no sales tax in Oregon, so this made the bags and shoes even cheaper than everywhere else. Awesome! Chris had paid for the lot - the sleeping bag was Nena's birthday pressie.

When we got back home it was pretty quiet as several members of the household had gone off to work at a Monster Truck show! We cooked up some yummy pasta with a huge pile of veggies and shared it with Val's boyfriend who promptly doused in in large quantities of ketchup. hehe.

The big job Saturday morning was attempting to repack all our stuff into our backpacks andmake it fit. No mean feat - we should've sent two boxes home! We then decided to go for a walk around the neighbourhood. So many of the houses have fruit and veg gardens just growing out on the street - it's so good to see. We wondered if there was some unwritten rule about not picking someone elses fruit (even if it's out on the nature strip). We couldn't resist sampling a few raspberries from one of the bushes though. Sorry - we ain't from round here! As we walked back towards the house we found a hair-dressers that Nena had been looking for (and we had heard was good). Unfortunately there was a bit of a queue and we didn't really have time to wait around so we kept going. Once home, we grabbed our packs and then went back out to the street to catch a bus into the city. We got in a lot faster that we though we would and ended up sitting on the footpath for an hour or so waiting for the bolt-bus to Vancouver. The bus was pretty delayed in Seattle as there was a big soccer game on and a street market aswell. That's ok - it game us time to go get some yummy Thai curry tofu from a stall. Eventually we continued on our way to Vancouver (stopping for a bit to wander through customs).

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Photos

Got that parents
Sign up on the wall in the cafe. Though, we reckon a drum kit would be a better gift than a puppy.

Napkin Art
There were several framed like this.

Street Food.
Great range and good prices too.

Mexican Noms
Yum.

No idea
Just sitting there. Had to take a photo. :)

Another random plant
Looked a bit like a lychee, but more soft and squishy. Didn't smell sweet - didn't taste it. :-)

Comfy
Just sitting in the garden...

Mini Garden Animals
More Portlandia weirdness

Just a number
Well, it looked cool.