Portland Vacation - Day 6 : Last day!

Oh so sad that our trip had to come to an end. We made the decision to spend our last day shopping to take advantage of the lack of sales tax they have there.

We spent about 4 hours at the outlet mall and then had our last meal together at Taco Bell. I know, all this delicious, fancy food the whole trip and we muck it up with Taco Bell. Hehe.

After shopping we walked around downtown Portland before going to the airport. We made our second trip to Voodoo Donuts where this time around we got a Capn' Crunch donut, a Fruit Loop donut, a jelly filled donut, and of course one last maple bacon bar.

Here's the line along the sparkly wall outside the building.

Stain glass of their most famous donuts.

They have a really cool chandelier in this shop.

Here are some shots from around town during our walk.

The boys really wanted to see the Rose Garden where they have the b-ball games.

We had a little mini photo shoot outside the Rose Garden before we left for the plane and not see each other possibly for at least another year.

I think John was trying to punch my boob in that last one. Anyhow, that's all for our trip. We got on our plane with no incident and landed back at Long Beach airport safe and sound.

These are truly some of the greatest friends a person could ever have. Jacob is now back in Japan and hopefully this next spring it will work out for us to try to visit him again. We plan on visiting Kelly next year.

Portland Vacation - Day 1 is worth its own post

Steven and I just got back from Portland last night. It was such a fantastic vacation full of rest and relaxation mixed in with some mischief and adventure. Our first day there felt days long particularly because our flight left Long Beach at 7am. We had to be up by 4:40am in order to get to the airport on time.

We landed and met up with our lovely host, Kelly.

She took us to breakfast in downtown Portland where we saw our first Portland hipsters. Then we headed to Powell's bookstore. You can find more info on Powell's here: http://relocationtoportland.com/2010/05/03/powells-books-downtown-portland/

We unfortunately didn't get any pictures of the bookstore but it's basically a dizzying amount of books in basically any genre you can think of. It's the kind of bookstore where if you lose the 4 other people you're with while in there, you're better off calling them to find out where they are than walking around the store.

We then drove to VooDoo Donuts. Just check out their menu and you'll know why VooDoo Donuts is a destination you can't miss while in Portland. During out trip we hit up 2 of their stores and both had lines wrapped around the block and coiled up like a Disney ride.

I mocked John's decision of the bacon maple donut but boy was I wrong. It's worth the wait!

Next we went to the Nike Employee Store. Everything in there is basically 50% off plus you get the added bonus of no tax! Steven and I both got a pair of shoes. Mine are a ridiculously bright neon pink:

Ha! $100 retail price. That price is for suckers!

Jacob and John went crazy and bought the whole store. I'm pretty sure the wore Nike gear for the entire remainder of the trip and we're still on day one!

We finally got to Kelly's house and rested for a while playing video games (Mario Kart just like old times).  We then went for a walk. There's a park and a middle school right next to Kelly's house. We played on this thing for a while trying to see who could last the longest without putting their feet on the ground...Jacob won:

I love this picture. We all look like maniacs but maniacs who have a lot of fun. And check out my blinding shoes! There's a track at the middle school where we raced. Jacob won, Steven in second with his long legs and me in third. There were only 3 in the race by the way.

Next we walked to Kelly's mom's house to steal some of her fresh eggs.  We stopped back at Kelly's house briefly before we went to the grocery store to buy some supplies (booze) and picked up some pizza. We watched some really bad TV (my first episode of Jersey Shore ever and the premiere of this season in Italy) and then called it a night!

It was an extremely long first day but worth every memory. I think we were energized by the fact that the sun didn't go down until 8:45pm. We definitely slept in the following day.