Portland, a Hostel Nation?

You’re probably wondering how we’re getting along after 4 weeks of traveling in close quarters with each other. It’s true – we have had some minor disagreements but have generally been as happy as we appear in all the photographs. What’s the point here? We did find ourselves in one such disagreement somewhere around San Francisco. With two weeks to reach Minneapolis, how many stops would we be able to fit in? Should we go to both Portland and Seattle? If so, would it leave enough time for Glacier and Yellowstone, as well as a trip through the Badlands?

After a little back and forth, we decided to just see Portland and stay for one night. But then our curiosity took over and we decided, what the heck, let’s stay 2 nights in Portland and say hell to the budget for a little while. On the way up the northern California coast, we called the NW Portland Hostel for a reservation and decided Seattle would have to wait for another trip.

We quickly fell in love with the Oregon coastline, and even more so the drive across the state back to Interstate 5 (especially after spotting a black bear pointed out by the Harley chick in front of us).

Ba-by Ruuuuuuth????!??!?!?

It was a long day of driving, but we arrived in Portland ready to par-tay! We hung out at the hostel until the free pizza at 9pm and then decided we were pretty tired and the partying could wait until the next morning.

As we expected, Portland turned out to be a pretty cool place to visit. We started off with a coffee and bagel (all local, of course) and then walked and free-transited our way through downtown to the rose gardens which then turned into a 2 mile hike to get back to the lightrail.

Liz stops to smell the roses

We then headed over to Powell’s Books which was highly recommended by the hostel staff to visit. It was a giant new/used book store and we picked up a copy of Man’s Search for Meaning, which came recommended by the Right-Brainer book and Sarah. Later that afternoon Liz searched for meaning at The Yoga Space‘s community class while Chris did some much-needed laundry. We found out that NE Portland is even more a hipster’s paradise than NW Portland while stuffing our faces with a delicious (and colorful) Cuban dinner at Pambiche. We headed back to NW Portland for a $3 movie deal (I Love You Man) and by the time we got back to the hostel room we wondered how we had found ourselves exhausted after another action-packed day.

But it turned out the day wasn’t quite over. Liz discovered after a glance at her iTunes iCalendar that NEKO CASE WAS PLAYING IN SEATTLE THURSDAY NIGHT! Hello, this was a message straight from the Great Integrity, himself! Again, after a little debate and rearranging the schedule, we decided to heck with the budget this week and squeeze in a day in Seattle. We left Wednesday morning after a quick stop at Portland’s local record store to pick up Neko’s new album. Seattle, here we come!!!

A fresh album purchase!

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