Saturday, June 18, 2011

Portland

I arrived home two days ago, after 6 weeks of travelling in Oregon and Washington. It was my first time in the U.S, and I had the time of my life. I've met amazing people, seen wonderful nature and of course, eaten lovely food. We've hitch-hiked and taken some buses, and stayed almost exclusively with people from couchsurfing. I will write the posts in chronological order and publish them during the next couple of weeks, I hope you will enjoy them!


First out is Portland. We flew in there May 4th, and stayed for 5 nights in total. 3 of them where spent staying with Amanda from In My Vegan Life and her husband Matt, and we couldn't have had a better start. Amanda took us under her wings and showed us around; we got to see downtown and the big Forest Park, as well as eat some of the great food offered. Amanda and Matt also had a great house with a huge backyard and two amazing dogs, Emerson and Andy.





































Amanda offered to come and pick us up at the airport, an offer we happily accepted since we were quite tired after 10 hours of flying. The weather was stunning and we headed for lunch in the southern parts of town. We got our first encounter with the well known Portland phenomenon: food carts. Me and Martin shared two menu items from Kitchen Dances; a nacho plate with lots of great stuff on it and a burrito.

















Andy the dog.

















 Amanda cooked for us in the evening, and we enjoyed this Mexican feast in the backyard. I had tamales for the first time in my life, which was fun.

















We had stopped by the vegan mini mall earlier in the day, and I was so overwhelmed by all the choices in Food Fight! that I only came out with a Jokerz bar. It was great though.

















The next day we went downtown. After seeing the library and  Powell's Books we grabbed a vegan bacon cheeseburger for lunch at DC Vegetarian. Nom nom nom.






 And of course there were dessert. We had ice cream from Back to Eden, my first soft serve since going vegan at 17. Martin topped his with marshmallows and I went for the caramel sauce.





















The next day, we hung out in the Forest Park. Then we headed towards Native Bowl for lunch and I went for the Missisippi Bowl, which was D-E-L-I-C-I-O-U-S! It consisted of Peppercorn ranch, BBQ Soy Curls,two kinds of BBQ sauce, house coleslaw, scallions and jasmine rice. That kept me happy until...

















...we went to Voodoo Doughnuts and bought a whole box of vegan doughnuts! 13 doughnuts in a big pink box, how can that go wrong?


















 The next morning we were heading out to the Columbia River Gorge for a couple of days so we all went to Dovetail Bakery and breakfast. After some superb biscuits and gravy and scones, we were two happy campers (well, backpackers) ready to go. The picture shows Amanda and Matt and all the breakfast!

















After the days at the river, we actually came back to Portland for two more nights. This time we stayed with two other people, and the woman cooked us moussaka.

















Our last day in Portland, we walked forever and had lunch at Flavourspot with Amy (and Tim) from Tahinitoo.

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