Portland

Chris Veldhuis
Jan 5, 2015
2 min read

Before we went there, we had heard so much about Portland. It would be this Hipster haven, with its cool foodcarts, thousands of microbreweries, amazing donuts and a huge bookstore, encompassing an entire block. All of this turned out to be true, and in the little time we had, we tried to enjoy all of it.

We were very lucky to stay with a professional chef who could point us to the best foodcarts in town. We had booked her little garden house through Airbnb, and later found out that she was quite the popular host (she even appeared in a Chinese travel guide!). We had such a wonderful time with her, her boyfriend and some of her friends, sharing stories and drinking gallons of wine all night long. This definitely added to our Portland experience.

The first day we explored the city by ourselves without any recommendations. We hadn't really spoken to our host yet. First we spent a lot of time browsing through the millions of books of Powell's City of Books, the biggest bookstore in the world. It truly was a city of books, in which one could walk about and get lost.

We had to control ourselves and purchased only two books. After this, we took a tram to look around a little bit and get a sense of the way the city was structured. We ended up at a microbrewery, Burnside Brewing Company. Here we had our first Portland beers, but as Anke does not really like beer I was forced to drink two pints. It was time to get some food in me.

For this we went to Lardo, a foodcart turned restaurant, mainly serving pork. We ordered the Korean Pork Shoulder sandwich. It was so good! After having had this great sandwich and fantastic beers, I started to realize there was no way for me to try all good things Portland has to offer in only two days. I was so full now, and there was so much more to try.

So we walked around a little bit and decided to go to Voodoo Donuts, as our Lonely Planet told us it was an absolute must. Voodoo Donuts takes the city's slogan "Keep Portland Weird" quite seriously and decorated its shop with all kinds of weird and colorful stuff.

We enjoyed the cashiers favorite donut and then took the bus to our Airbnb home. Here we were invited to drink wine and eat with our host. We spent all night talking and learnt that Voodoo Donuts is funny and nice, but has forgotten how to really make donuts. For this we would have to go to Blue Star Donuts, which we did. Their donuts are awesome, especially the blueberry, bourbon, basil version!

Unfortunately, we had to leave the next evening. We brought some Thai from a foodcart with us and drove south.