Portland

We checked in fairly late at the ultra-cool Hotel Modera in Portland. It's connected to a cool restaurant that had live jazz playing upon our arrival.

We were lucky, as the Portland Marathon was beginning that weekend, and vacancy was very low in Portland. In fact, it was so low, it coerced us into leaving town later the next day instead of staying... more on that later.

Next morning, and armed with a list of places to see, we set out about town. In search of food, of course. First, we walked to the Farmer's market, which was probably one of the best I've ever been too. This city is very much into local/organic/whole foods, and variety was... um... varietous.

Unfortunately we have no pictures of the market because our camera was out of service, because someone (Sharon) forgot to charge the battery.

However, here is a picture of a funky apple I ate later in the day...

After moderately filling our stomachs, we returned to the hotel, retrieved a charged camera battery, and set upon the town once again on Portland's FREE downtown transportation system (buses and streetcars), heading up to the Pearl district to the Pearl Bakery.

Portland is a foodie's city. And we'll have barely scraped the surface with our quick tour of the area.

Wandering westwards, we encountered the infamous Powell's Books, which in fact, is many buildings of bookstores. We entered the main one, and found too much to absorb for one visit. 

The prices are sweet, and the variety here is also varietous. Also keep in mind the prices are in US, not those jacked-up Canadian prices you see on the back of all books. Oh yeah, and Oregon has no sales tax!

We left with 180 pounds of books. And it rained pretty much the whole day. And we learned that "true" Portlanders don't use umbrellas. We compromised and wore raincoats.

Bringing style to the Portland area

We stopped at Rogue Distillery and Public House (sorry again, no pictures) for some local brews and a bite, wandered around a little more, and left with tears in our eyes (ok, rain) for the next destination.

Goodbye, Portland!

We were told by reliable sources that Portland was an incredible place to see, and would make up for us skipping Seattle. While we can't comment on Seattle, Portland is indeed worthy of a more thorough visit.

More masochistic behaviour

After that harrowing experience at Quinault in Olympic National Park, we had worked up a bit of a hunger.

Passing by a fast-food strip in the town of Elma reminded me that I had yearned to have some KFC in the USA. Why, I do not know, as I do not eat KFC regularly nor have any desire to during my regular life. However I somehow convinced Sharon we had to take care of some fast food tastings as well... and it happened.

My original plan of trying the standard 2-piece meal was replaced when I saw a "deal" that we do not have in Canada, but have only dreamed of... in disgust. Ladies and gentlemen, I present to you, the Double Down:

The double-down sandwich on the left is the ultimate expression of fast-food-meat-packing gluttony. Instead of bread, it's chicken. And in between the "chicken-bread", lies cheese, bacon, and some ridiculously high-fat creamy sauce. And even more ludicrous are the sauces they give you for dipping, as if the cream-covered secret herbs and spices from the Colonel wasn't enough.

And note in also pictured sauces, they aren't real. It's not honey, it's "honey sauce": corn syrup, then honey. It's not butter, it's "buttery spread"... I can't remember what's in that, but it isn't margarine either. And don't forget to have some ranch with that.

Surprisingly, it wasn't bad.

Port Angeles and Olympic National Park

Later in the afternoon, we took yet another ferry, this time to Port Angeles. 

We did not intend for this leg of our journey to take so long, so we ended up staying overnight in Port Angeles (which has nothing much angelic about it, according to Lonely Planet). But we did find this to be one of the most friendliest places so far! Even a gas station attendant provided us with more tourist info than your average tour guide.

We had dinner at the surprisingly good, hipster Soho Asian Bistro, and stayed at the surprisingly good Olympic Lodge. The delay in our travels was a good thing. Having my own personal pool and hot tub was a bonus.

Oh yes! Before I forget, allow me to resolve the cliffhanger from an earlier post. Right before we left Victoria, we had mailed Joanna her condo/garage keys that I had kept by accident. And then when we unpacked our stuff at the Olympic Lodge, I realized we had forgotten our garment bag in our last hotel... in Victoria. It had our wedding dress attire, and some other dressy clothes - so we'll survive. Lucky for us, the hotel still had it, and we arranged to have Rich pick it up for us.

Next day was a day of sights, at Olympic National Park. Getting there was beautiful in itself:

We also passed by a town that is quite popular with teen girls. For those familiar with the Twilight series, it is based in Forks, Washington. We had not known this beforehand, but couldn't help it when encountering a few Twilight-focused shops.

Neither Sharon nor I are familiar with the books/movies, but I imagined that if a vampire or werewolf were to come out of those magical forests and approach us, we'd probably tell them how cute they are.

Onward to massive Olympic park, one of the few temperate rainforests in the world. Our first inland trip was to Hoh forest, where lush vegetation is EVERYWHERE.

... and the firs are MASSIVE:

(Sharon is at the end of this fallen tree)

After spending some time hiking the Hoh, we continued the drive south and checked out a couple of beaches:

Searching for clams

Searching for meaning

Searching for critters to talk to

After the coast, I hadn't had enough forest, so we drove around Lake Quinault. I'd include some more pictures but haven't, because:

1) the internet connection at this point in time is incredibly slow uploading pictures,

2) it looks much the same as the Hoh forest above, and

3) we didn't take many pictures of the Quinault forest because I was driving and Sharon was scared to death.

Why was she scared to death? Because:

4) it was getting darker and darker as we progressed through the thick canopy, and the increasing fog wasn't helping,

5) the road got narrower, especially when we were beside cliffs that sharply dropped off,

6) there was nobody around for miles to hear our screams should we fall off the cliff,

7) ...and she could tell I was starting to get a little scared myself, because of how nicely I was acting towards her.

Obviously we survived and caught a few more nice scenes on our way out:

That was enough excitement for the day - and we headed down to Oregon into the night.

Victoria, sweet Victoria

This next post is on Victoria. Our friends Rich (yep, that Rich) and Siobhan, went off and deserted us a while back to relocate to Victoria. So, because we miss them, we went to see them there. Being the great hosts they are, they put us up, took us around and showed us a rockin' good time.

First they shared with us a few of their favourite places in and around Victoria;

The shoreline...

Mount Douglas - you can see Mount Baker in the background here...

and Gord's Head (i think..)We also got to catch up with my classmate Kaoru who has also moved out to Victoria to continue her culinary studies...

Of course there was a bit of local BC wine to share...

just a bit more posing, and then some (temporary) tattoo creations

A little wandering the streets at night to enjoy the views...

The next day Joe and I did some wandering through Chinatown and the alleys there

Fisherman's Wharf and the boat houses

we visited with some of the locals (harbour seals)

before we headed off on the next leg of our adventure.

It was hard to leave Victoria...but we plan to come back!