Warning this is a picture heavy post. These are photos I haven’t gotten a chance to post and some lessons I learned from my trip.
Continue reading Photo outakes and lessons learned from the Oregon and Washington trip
Address:
611 SW Kingston Ave
Portland, OR 9720
Warning: This post is picture heavy but well worth it 🙂
The Japanese Garden at Portland may be small. It took us about an hour exploring the garden, but it was LUSH full of green plants and beauty. Seeing it in person was unreal and fairy-tale like.
Date: May 30th
Neighborhood: All over Portland
Difficulty: 2 out of 5
Weather: Misty
Distance: About 12 miles
For a few dollars, you can rent a bike for a day to explore Portland. You can bike a few miles to get to the next neighborhood, drop it off at the nearest bike share pod, borrow again when you choose, and repeat.
I learned Portland is a fairly small city compared to Los Angeles — in fact smaller than San Fernando Valley. Portland has 145 square miles, Los Angeles has 503 square miles, and San Fernando Valley has 260 square miles — wow it takes up more than half of Los Angeles! Due to Portland’s fairly smaller size, its sights were more compact which makes it definitely more bikeable.
Also, it made me think I should bike a little bit more at home. If it’s within a 5 mile radius, I should bike there. I’ll let you know how that experiment goes.
Anyways on to biking…
After the Memorial Day ceremony at Willamette National Cemetary, we went to the other side of Portland to the zoo. Veterans get free admission that day. It’s a fairly small zoo (compared to San Diego Zoo and Wild Animal Park) — but it’s beautiful and full of lovely greenery.
Below are some of my favorite snaps of the zoo:
Otter is on the left and the seal is on the right.
Address:
4001 Southwest Canyon Road
Portland, OR 97221
Special Announcement and off-topic: I finished my FAFSA for grad school. When I attended the open house for the Masters Program last month, they suggested to finish the FAFSA before applying to the program. The idea was a little weird because when I was doing undergrad, I filled out a FAFSA after I got accepted to a university reporting. Maybe the school process is a little difference since this is a program is geared towards working professionals(?) who will continue to work during the academic year. Anyways to me, this is a big step. Before vacation, I was on the edge of burning out. What prevented me from really burning out was putting certain things aside such as doing my grad school stuff or instead of cooking dinner, I order food
Address
3753 N Mississippi Ave
Portland, OR 97227
Brace yourself, I’ll be binge-posting a few more things from our vacation. I think Blue Star Donuts deserves a post of its own. They’re delicious not-too-sweet brioche donuts and I am glad they have a spot in Venice Beach so I don’t need a plane ticket to go to Blue Star Donuts. I still think it is quite a trek from house. It would be even nicer if Blue Star Donuts opened up in the Valley — maybe in Sherman Oaks? It would be within my cycling radius ;-).
Continue reading Blue Star Donuts in Portland
After going to the Memorial Day service, walking around the zoo, and racking up more than 19,000 steps on FitBit — my husband and I needed to eat something. It’s safe to say we burned our calories from Sunday night’s meal at Podnah’s.
“A hero is someone who has given his or her life to something bigger than oneself.” – –Joseph Campbell
Address:
Podnah’s Pit BBQ
1625 NE Killingsworth St
Portland, OR 97211
Eat, Play, Live 