Traveling with Laura

People often ask me how I choose my vacation destinations. Honestly, I don’t have a bucket list or anything like that (except for New Zealand and South Africa). I usually just choose places that fit my mood at the time. April was my first vacation since last summer and I wanted an equal mix of adventure and rest. Hence, Zion National Park. This time, I was drawn to a place I visited almost exactly 10 years ago: Portland and the Oregon coast. On my previous trip, I covered much of eastern Oregon. However, my travel style has definitely evolved since then and I now find myself more inclined to visit just one or two places and really get to know those places as opposed to moving around a lot during a vacation. On my last visit to Oregon, I loved the relaxed, laid back vibe of Portland and the gorgeous scenery along the Oregon coast. It shouldn’t come as a surprise, then, that I settled on Portland and Cannon Beach as my two destinations for this vacation.

Last night, I flew nonstop from Boston to Portland in Alaska Airlines’ first class cabin. My only other experience with them was on a trip to Seattle in 2014 and I can’t say I was overly impressed this time. As you might imagine, I follow several travel vlogs on YouTube and many of the vloggers love Alaska Airlines. For me, it was just so-so. I’ve come to appreciate the extra legroom and spacious seats in first class, and Alaska had both of those. However, this particular aircraft was one of their older ones and there was no seat-back entertainment, wifi was $39.95 (with no streaming access; newer planes are equipped with satellite internet – including streaming services – for just $8), and the food was mediocre. Fortunately, multiple glasses of sparkling wine helped to minimize the shortfalls. 

My hotel for the first part of my vacation is The Duniway in Portland, a boutique Hilton hotel just a block away from Pioneer Courthouse Square. While the room is spacious and well-appointed, it’s also very dark. Not so much dark furniture or decor, just a lack of lighting. 

I managed to sleep for about 5 ½ hours, much less than my usual 8-9 hours a night. Today started slowly with a leisurely (mostly because the restaurant was severely short staffed) mediocre breakfast in the hotel restaurant, Mayrose. I had breakfast sliders with bacon, egg, cheese, and spicy mayo on biscuits which were both dry and crumbly. 

I really didn’t have much of a plan for the day so I decided to spend the rest of the morning at the Lan Su Chinese Garden. It was cloudy and chilly when I drove over but the sun came out about an hour into my visit. I walked around on my own for a while, then joined a guided tour at 11AM.

The older gentleman who was the volunteer docent had one of those gentle, soothing voices you just want to pay attention to. It was interesting to hear how each of the five senses was highlighted in each of the unique outdoor courtyard rooms. Many of the design elements were brought over from Portland’s sister city, Suzhou, China, and built by Chinese artisans from Suzhou. I especially enjoyed the mosaic patterns on the floors and the moon gates leading from room to room.

The 45 minute tour of the garden passed quickly and my lack of sleep was already catching up to me. I knew that being up well past my normal bedtime, plus the time difference and less sleep than usual would lead to an inevitable crash sometime today, I just didn’t expect it to happen so early. I headed back to my hotel and went for a short walk to Pioneer Courthouse Square (Portland’s “living room”) where I enjoyed a drinking chocolate from Moonstruck Chocolate while doing a little people watching. I was pooped.

I went back to my room for a while before heading out for food. On my way to dinner, I stopped at Powell’s City of Books, a Portland institution and the largest independent bookstore in the world. The bookstore contains both new and used books and covers 4 floors in a full city block. I didn’t pick up any books, but I had fun wandering around.

I knew I was going to want to curl up in bed very early, so “dinner” took place late afternoon at Deschutes Brewery’s Portland Public House. I had eaten here on my last visit to Portland and was pleased to see that they had a cider on their menu. It was VERY dry, but good, and coupled with a pulled pork sandwich and marionberry cobbler, it was a delicious way to end the day.