Portland, Day Two

I awoke this morning to the sounds of general mayhem. As mentioned before, there were some people camped out along the street in tents the night before, a sight that was both intriguing and a bit weird. Especially since I started changing for bed by the window before realizing the had a full view. No charge, happy campers, no charge.... So anyways, I woke up this morning to bullhorns and laughter and stumbled over to the window to see huge crowds, police barricades and.... roses. A bazillion roses. Real rose bushes in temporary pots, roses on shirts, roses in hair, rose posters and wreaths, and on and on and on and suddenly it clicked. We hapless travelers have timed our visit to coincide with the damned Portland Rose Festival (www.rosefestival.org), and are staying on the street that serves as the main drag for the damned Rose Parade.Now, such a festival would be huge in any city, but you must also remember that Portland is a very sad and middlin' kind of place, so this weekend for them must be like a decade of birthdays and Christmases all in one. Hence the mayhem. The city set up seating, as did many of the hotels, and hours before the parade start time of 10am its all completely filled. The camping out is starting to make sense. If you're a rose freak, that is, which they apparently are. I look over to where their tent was, and it is packed up but folding chairs supporting several people in rose-adorned sweatshirts have taken its place. They look very excited.

(In fairness, the Rose festival is a couple weeks long and there are many events that look like lots of fun, especially for the kid/family/Alana-who-loves-quirky-things sector of the population, so it might be an interesting thing to check out at some point! Actually, I'd like to purposely do two weeks there and report back....hmmm....A cynic does Rose Fest. What do you think?)

The decision is made that we need to vacate the hotel and general area ASAP, so we can get out of the crowds before the parade makes its way to us. Our destination? The Portland Saturday Market!

The market (http://www.saturdaymarket.org/) actually runs Saturday and Sunday, and is a big reason I aimed to hit Portland over a weekend. I miss the flea and farmers markets back East (Clevelands West Side Market is amazing) and wanted to work as many of those kinds of adventures into my trip as I could. And Nancy and I also just love to shop. The actual purchase of things is not nearly as important as the search. It's a girl thing.

We walked the few blocks to the market, and quickly determined that shopping on an empty stomach was a bad idea. Breakfast was needed. There were loads of food vendors to choose from, but we both gravitated rather quickly to crepes and iced coffee.

Mmm. Portland DOES have great coffee! And the crepes were made to order, and delicious. The berry selection looked great, but I opted for a savory creation with spicy sausage, spinach and gruyere cheese. Nancy had ham and cheese. Both were great.

Then onto the shopping. The market has a little of everything, from art to jewelry to clothing to food products. I had mistakenly thought there was a farmers market as well, but that's at a separate site which was unfortunately across town.

This man was walking around with his cat on his shoulder. Because he can.

These were real flowers at a stall at the market - its a Sarracenia, nicknamed "Pitcher Plant". The buds grow into vase like blooms that secrets a liquid that attracts insects. The slippery slope of the "pitcher" causes the insects to fall inside where they are trapped in a sticky substance, killed and digested. Awesome.

This is for Christina :)

Nancy and I both got rings, I got a bunch of little jars of gourmet jelly (jalapeno, rhubarb, marionberry, etc) and we had a great time walking around, touching everything (as I always have to) and people watching. We finally left because we got tired, and were also tired of people bugging poor Zack. He's such a cutie and such a sweetheart, everyone wants to pet him but I think it turns into sensory overload for him sometimes. I was amazed that people were bringing their toddlers up to pet him with ever asking me if he was friendly or could they pet him. Some people would just grab his fur from behind and the poor pup would get startled and jump. I started to get ticked at the rudeness, and Zack was getting weirded out, so we took out leave.


We passed this on the walk back to the hotel - Dad works for a similar (unaffiliated) version of this in Cleveland. Great organizations, if you have one near you definitely check it out.

And of course, Chinatown.

After a rest back at the hotel, we started contemplating our dinner options. We both were feeling rather homebody-ish, and after the busy and people-filled afternoon, didn't want to go to a busy restaurant or drag Zack around much more. The solution? Hotel picnic!

We went to Whole Foods, where we stocked up on wine (duh), several kinds of cheese, crackers, heirloom tomato (my FAVORITE), prosciutto, assorted marinated and stuffed olives and artichoke dip.

Back at the hotel, we got our complimentary leopard print robes on, ordered up He's Just Not That Into You, and dug in!

The spread

mm, tomato

Olives!!

Exhausted puppies make for great foot rests.

It was such a great meal, and a great alternative to finding a restaurant in a strange city while traveling. It was affordable too, considering all we had, and would have been even more so if we were able to find a local gourmet market instead of resorting to Whole Paycheck. I highly recommend hotel picnics!!

Oh - and we finished both bottles of wine :)