Friday night Joe and I met up with Tu, our friend from Charleston who used to work in Rocky Mount, NC with Joe and now works for Boeing and was in Washington for business. We went out for some Korean barbeque for dinner. We ordered a combo plate which had far too much bacon meat for our liking, but everything else was wonderful. Afterwards we did what Asians love to do…go to the casino! We drove up to Tulalip Casino in Marysville. I had forgotten that you could smoke in there. The amount of sketchy people and stuffy air really made it an unpleasant time for me. But the guys played some games and seemed content.
Saturday morning Tu and his co-worker Andrew met us at our house at 8am to drive down to Portland, Oregon. It’s a 3.5 hour drive. We bought tickets to the Portland International Beer Festival.
Once we arrived in Portland, we drove by the North Blocks Park in the Pearl District to see if there was anywhere near there we’d like to eat for lunch before we start drinking at noon when the festival opens. The Pearl District is really nice with narrow tree-lined streets, streetcars and light-rail passing by frequently and lots of cute little shops. We ended up just eating some quick sandwiches and hydrating on water.
Joe dropped us off and took the car over to the hotel across the river. We had sampled about 3 4oz beers by the time he made it to the festival. The good thing about getting there when it opened was we were able to snag a table for 4 with an umbrella. We were really worried it was going to rain on us that day, but we lucked out, having some great sunny weather that day.
After drinking for 2 hours, we knew we’d need something to do while we drank the day away. Tu and Andrew left in search of a gas station or somewhere that might sell a deck of cards. The 2 were gone at least 30 minutes. Apparently they saw a good bit of downtown Portland, including Chinatown and many boarded up storefronts before finally locating a deck of cards for sale.
We played a game of spades which Andrew and I don’t know too well or are too good at. Afterwards we played some @sshole. As soon as someone established the rule of beer b!tch has to refill drinks while @sshole deals, the night took a turn. We were no longer trying new beers for the taste, we were drinking whatever beer was brought back to us.
I met up with my friend Lauren, from our undergrad NCSU days. She took me to the best food carts in town to have an amazing ham & gruyere cheese crepe. It was great to catch up and talk about what all our architecture friends are up to. Lauren introduced me to one of her architecture friends that works in Seattle was down visiting Portland as well. For dinner, the guys ordered food from nearby food carts serving everything from hot dogs to Vietnamese.
When I got back from dinner with Lauren, the guys had made friends with 2 guys San Jose that flew up for the beer festival weekend. They played Hearts with us for the remainder of the festival. There was never an empty glass on the table since the odd-man out not playing (usually Tu) was refilling everyone’s 4 oz tasting glasses.
We used up the last of our tickets close to last call around 9pm. We walked out of the festival to make our way to Voodoo doughnuts, which is world famous. There were 2 rickshaw drivers at the exit willing to bike the 4 of us the 8 blocks or so to the shop. I’m glad we did that and didn’t have to find it on our own as it was getting darker by the minute.
The line at Voodoo was long out the door stretching at least 50 feet. Apparently it is like that all the time, so it must be good. We came all this way so we were going to wait for donuts. There were donuts covered in Captain Crunch, Fruit Loops, Coco Puffs, M&Ms, you name it! Tu ordered the bacon maple bar which has maple frosting and bacon on top. He said it wasn’t that good. I got the Cock-N-Balls which is the shape of well, you know what, topped with chocolate frosting and filled with Bavarian cream.
I don’t remember taking any of these pictures that night, but sometimes that’s when you get the best ones. At least it explains why I don’t know why I ordered what donut I did; I was too busy snapping photographs to read the menu board.
No comments:
Post a Comment