Day 2-3

So day 2 of the train trip went quite well. Sleeping in our little sleeper car was...not exactly the most comfortable thing on earth, but it was decent enough. And once we were awake and the room was converted back to the daytime setting, we were once again very comfortable and had a lovely morning playing cards, reading harry potter, and drinking more boxed margarita.

A little after lunch we arrived in portland and said goodbye to the coast starlight train. What a cool way to travel.

Portland is pretty hip. Most of the many homeless people we saw were dressed better than me. We got to our hotel, the Benson, which has housed every president since Taft. The lobby is super swanky and our room was GIGANTIC. From the hotel we walked to Powell’s Books, this giant bookstore, and looked around a bit, then had dinner at Deschutes Brewery. Very good beer, and my first of probably several Fish-n-Chips of the trip. They were delicious.

We had big plans for the evening but were a little tuckered out and ended up crashing early in our huge hotel room.

Waking this morning, we headed out early to get breakfast at Everett St Bistro, where i had Gran Marnier french toast (amazing) and jeff got some crazy waffles with bacon and walnuts. Pretty sure we’re going on massive diets when we get home.

Leaving breakfast we ran into the Portland Corgy convention. No, i’m not joking. There were like a hundred corgies running around. Hilarious and ridiculous and adorable.

We walked down to the waterfront, this really cool park that runs a few miles along the Willamette river. Lots of cool bridges to look at, lots of kids and dogs, and maybe we worked off a tiny fraction of our breakfast calories by walking for a couple hours. The weather was perfect too, a little overcast but not cold.

We had lunch at the Portland Saturday Market, i can’t believe they pull this thing off every week, it takes up several city blocks, and there’s a ton of crafts and cool things as well as cool food. It feels like the people of Portland are pretty darn relaxed. A very cool town.

And just like that, our 23 hours in Portland were up, and we’re now on the train on our way to Seattle. Good times.