Portland:Day 1
I almost die from excitement is the basic gist: the airport, airplanes, traveling, knowing I get to be in a new city with my love, the Pacific Northwest is about to be OUR playground, and so on. Everything went well with getting to Portland (unlike our trip home...more on that later). The flights were on time and overall were smooth. As an added bonus we got a GREAT view of Mt. Hood, amongst other things.
Here we are being super excited to be in love and on a plane together. Oh yea, and happy as hell we were almost to our final destination.
Moving on. So, we get to the airport, get off the plane, get our bags, and head out to explore. First though, we had to buy (or we THOUGHT we HAD to buy) tickets for the TriMet. A girl has to be able to move around in a city. DUH. We opted for the 7-day pass at a whopping $22.50 each. $45.00 is not bad for a week of transportation for two. (Too bad we didn't need to buy the tickets at all. Stay tuned for that). Anywho, we find the redline train and head for the city. It was about a 40 minute ride, all of which was great for sight-seeing.
We arrive at our stop, Pioneer Square. As soon as we step off the train, we can tell that this place is bustling with activity: lots of people running around, live music, food stands, and plenty of entertainment. At this point, my sense of direction is completely shot, so I found this an opportunity to ask for some directions to the Marriot. Good thing downtown Portland has an over-abundance of safety officers and policemen constantly monitoring the area. I find a friendly looking fellow, Officer Ross, who is happy to oblige and sends us on our way.
A couple of blocks of walking and BAM! We are here! YAY! We step inside The Marriot to check in. The lady at the desk asks our name. We tell her. "I'm sorry, what was the name?" she repeats. "Briggs" Lindsay says. "Oh.....UNFORTUNATELY you have arrived at the wrong property. You need to walk here (shows us on a map), to the Courtyard by Marriot." UGHHHHHHHH. Okay...more walking, dragging bags, and what-not. So, we finally get to our hotel, which was actually WAAAAAY more our style than the first place. It's been completely redecorated, so it's modern and super cozy. We grab our belongings and head up to our room.
After a small amount of unpacking and resting, we decide to head out to the Saturday Market. This was one of the FEW things we actually planned for our trip to PDX. I had done some research online and decided this was right up our alley. This was the largest outdoor market I have ever seen in my life. NO JOKE. Imagine filling up a football stadium with vendors of all different sorts (food, artists of all kinds, clothing, magicians, musicians, etc..), add a double set of train tracks, a giant fountain, and several thousand people and VOILA! Lindsay and I were both so overwhelmed. I only managed to get two pictures of the place and neither one of them do it justice..but here you go anyhow.
We walked around gawking at all the goods for probably 2 hours. I bought a shirt, Lindsay bought nothing. Wait...we did have some shrimp nachos, some wanna be Japanese food, and an elephant ear. Sadly enough, the elephant ear wins the award for best food. After all of that, we'd both had enough and decided it was time to head back to the hotel for a little siesta. On our way to the train, we became acquainted with with this little fountain.
People would walk by and drink out of it, "wash" their hands, fill water bottles, etc. We were kind of weirded out by it, just wondering where the water comes from, if it is constantly recycled, and why there were no drains nearby. As we explored Portland, we discovered these are EVERYWHERE, but we never figured out our looming questions.
We wanted a picture of us waiting for the MAX. We snapped a few....and here is the best one at this particular stop. We were TIRED as hell and just wanted a nap.
We made it back to the hotel room and pretty much collapsed into bed. What a luxury...a KING size bed with NO DOGS to hog up all the space! I think we slept for about 3 hours, woke up, and decided we were famished. We ordered some local/organic pizza from a place called Hammy's and ate in bed. It was like pure heaven. Then, it was time for bed. HA. BIG DAY. I think we were both asleep before our heads even hit the pillows.
Sidenote: someone knocked on the door at almost 5am. Lindsay was closest to the door, so she got up. I somehow managed to be awake enough to remind her to look and see who it was before she opened it. Ummm...yea. Pizza guy. After some back and forth about did we order a pizza and were we Mike Scallions and are the last four digits of our credit card 9394??? We convinced the guy that it wasn't us. GEESH.
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