Olympic peninsula trip

We took advantage of the gorgeous (and rare) winter sunny weather during the weekend to do a one day trip to the Olympic peninsula. We took again the ferry to Bremmerton and then drove north along the coast to Gamble. There we enjoyed a very large exposition of sea shells and the coastal landscape before heading to the three crabs restaurant located in Dungeness (that seems like a good match doesn't it ?).


Abandoned pier in Gamble


Looking towards Victoria island (Canada) in Dungeness. I liked the lighthouse on the sand peninsula.

After gorging ourselves with seafood (delicious crab cakes, and yes there seems to be a pattern here), we headed towards Port Angeles where we started the climb to hurricane ridge. Hurricane ridge is in the olympic national park, a bit higher than 5000ft. We arrived before sunset on the snowy ridge and enjoyed a beautiful scenic sunset up there. There was a rope tow for skiers but I wouldn't recommend going there to ski unless it's your very first time. There is pretty much no slope that would guarantee more than 5 minutes of entertainment.


Sunset on Hurricane ridge


Again looking north towards Canada


Pretty Victoria, and Canadian Cascades in the background

We drove back by night and still enjoyed a clear view of Seattle skyline (which apparently is very rare at this season).

X-Mas 2009

We drove to Seattle to spend this year's Christmas with M's dad. As we arrived we were welcomed by his bright decorations.


The next day we started early to prepare the dinner's feast (which was less Gargantuesque than Thanksgiving I have to admit). We started with an Avocado-shrimp-mushroom salad.


Followed by a stuffed roasted orange duck


and a chestnut-chocolate "buche" with candied orange peels


The next day we drove around to M's hometown and made a stop at the unfortunately (I've been told) closed XXX root beer stand


And we finished with a nice view on Mt Baker and Lake Samamish


Merry Christmas to all of you !

Portland Gallery

Two weeks ago, I went around downtown with my 1950's Medium format Zeiss loaded with TriX while Michelle was shopping with girl friends. The weather was typical Portland but mostly dry. This series of shots is quite representative of the city I think.

Body piercing, strippers, grocery store, used book store and restaurant with an old sign, this is Portland. Highest rate of strip-clubs per inhabitants of the US, home of the largest used book store in the country (Powell's), and lots of small places to eat. This alignment is quite typical of downtown.


When the weather is better, locals prefer to enjoy the great outdoors and go hike, canoe, windsurf, ski,... around. The state is half as large as France and 15 times less populated, and Portland is a big city, you can imagine how wild the rest is. So yes we have a lot of stores selling camping gear or for other outdoor related activities.


I've already talked about Voodoo Doughnuts here, but it has to be there in a series about Portland. They're open from 6am to 3am, the other night we wanted to stop at 1:30 am, and finally gave up because the line was still too long... As the place accepts only cash, it is quite a gathering spot for beggars, but I don't blame them if they can get the occasional doughnut gift, why not, they're delicious.


Yes, and locals are proud of the weirdness of their city, let's keep it that way it's more fun.


Made in Oregon sign from the 50's, they don't do those anymore as this is forbidden to avoid polluting the landscape. The old ones like this one became monuments. I like the fact that the highway 5 sign is plastered with a poster protesting against global warming. This is another characteristic trait of the Northwest: it's eco-consciousness. People here recycle, buy organic and local products and try to keep the place clean more like we expect it to be in France or Germany than the usual American caricature (at least from the perspective of a European). Fun fact about that sign, the arrow pointing right is actually pointing North :).


Portland without bridges would not be Portland. There are 11 of these crossing the Willamette river around town. Many of them have been built in the 30s and the architecture varies a lot. This is Steel Bridge, and it's quite similar to Hawthorne bridge which sits next to our place. The central part lifts to let large boats pass and I like 2 floors bridges.


Portland has a larger gay and lesbian community than San Francisco in proportion to its population. That leads to some quite original entertainment clubs. Darcelle XV is certainly one of the weirdest around.


The city is sprinkled around with parks, most of them have statue of heroes or wild animals, but this one in China town has a quite interesting elephant sculpture.


Talking about Portland nowadays, one needs to talk about unemployment. The state had the second highest unemployment rate of the US for quite a while now, with almost 13% unemployed. The amount of homeless in downtown Portland is quite daunting. This cafe accepts food stamps and is pretty much always full.

X-Mas Lights

Last night after work we drove by a crazy house decorated with Christmas lights all over the place. We decided to stop by because it was worth a picture. It turned out that it was an open house that you could visit and enjoy all the insane x-mas lighting. The house is one of the earliest ones built in Portland, it belonged to one of the early frontiersmen that went around the northwest and was built in 1884. Just the visit of the house was worth it.
For your enjoyment, I'll put a few pictures of something that looks so American to me, my French readers will certainly enjoy :).



M wowed ;)


Pin-Gouin


Nice dinner table


Just for one of my younger readers

The rest of the series can be found here.

Merry X-Mas.

French Comics list

It's been a while I should have done this, I'll try to keep this updated over time, so here is my French "BD" list, in kind of disorder.

Les arcanes de la lune noire 1
Les chroniques de la lune noire: 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10
Le triangle secret 1,2,3,4,5,6,7
Le triangle secret INRI 1,2,3,4
Dans le secret du triangle
Le Decalogue 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10
Le Decalogue: le XI eme commandement
Complainte des landes perdues: Kylede Klanach, Dame Gerfaut, Sioban, Blackmore, Moriganes
Le combat ordinaire 1,2,3,4
Le cycle de Cyann: 1,2,3,4
Les passagers du vent: 1,2,3,4,5
Hors Jeu (Bilal, Cauvin)
La trilogie Nikopol
Le sommei du monstre, 32 decembre, rendez vous a Paris, Quatre?, Animal'z
Duuna l'integrale
Gorn 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10
Kookaboora 1,2,3,4,5
Kookaboora Universe 1,2,3,4,5,6,7
Travis 1,2,3,4,5,6.1,6.2,7,8
Travis Karmatronics 1
Carmen Mc Callum 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8
Carmen+Travis 1,2
Code Mc Callum 1,2,3
Universal War One 1,2,3,4,5,6
Hk 1.1,1.2,1.3,1.4,2.1
La quete de l'oiseau du temps 1,2,3,4
Avant la quete 1,2
Les forets d'Opale 1,2,3,4,5
Persepolis 1,2,3
Poulet aux prunes
Jacob le Cafard
Le tueur 1,2,3,4,5,6
Alef-Thau integrale 1
La caste des Meta Barons
Les maitres Cartographes Integrale
Carnets d'orient 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8
Djinn 1,2,3,4,5,6
Le grand mort 1,2
Le complexe du chimpanze 1,2,3
Hauteville House 1,2,3,4
Lincoln 1,2
Le chat du rabin 1,2,3,4,5
Jeanette pointu 15
Le troisieme testament 1,2,3,4
Gaston 19
Le grand pouvoir du Chninkel
Siegfried 1
Thorgal 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10,11,12,13,14,14,15,16,17,18,19,20,21,22,23,24,25,26,27,28,29,29bis
Vlad 1,2,3,4,5,6,7
Xoco 1,2,3
Yiu 1,2,3,4,5,6
Yiu premieres missions 1,2,3,4,5,6

U-cut

We had planned to go ski today, but despite a fantastic weather over Portland, Mt Hood was in the clouds and a strong blizzard was blowing over the Meadows ski resort where we planned to go to. Additionally it seemed the road was deep in the snow and I haven't purchased chains yet. Instead we decided to stay where the nice weather was and we went to the Beck's farm to get ourselves a Christmas tree. The farm was in a pretty rural area, near Oregon city south of Portland. We started getting a view on Mt Hood as we headed there but it still looked quite stormy over there.


I was worried we would have difficulties finding the farm, but as we were heading off the highway we crossed dozen of signs for various tree farms. Once there we enjoyed the American quality service. They provide you with a saw, a piece of cardboard so you can kneel without getting muddy, they have a machine to shake your tree so you won't spread too many needles, another one to put a net around the tree, and another one to drill the bottom of the tree so you can attach it to a stand (sold on the spot as well).

Once home M started to decorate the tree with whatever we had from last year in Israel. It became obvious quite fast that we clearly didn't have enough. After a stop at Fred Meyer, we had more than enough and she could work hard at it.

Winter Festival

Today we stopped by at the Winter Festival downtown Portland, at Pioneer Square also known as the Holiday Ale Festival. They just build an enormous tent covering the entire Pioneer Square, you pay 20$ to enter, they give you 10 tickets that are worth 10 tastings (some tastings are worth 2 tickets though) and you go around and pick your selection. As the title says it's only winter ales, many brewed just for the occasion. The list of beers is available here.


We were a group of 6 and we spread and shared our tastings in order to get more coverage :). My conclusion was that many were good, but the Belgians were just unbeatable (a few Belgian breweries did the trip), the best was "Scaldis Noel" from the Brasserie Dubuisson. We had quite some fun, and finished our coupons on cheese tasting as we had enough beer before walking back home. We also spotted a few elves , proof that it was'nt alcohol induced visions:


An for those that would not believe that there was (local and tasty) cheese at the festival, look how happy the customers look like:


The rest of the picture selectio is here.

Glittering Seattle

The day after Thanksgiving we drove to Seattle to enjoy the city while the weather was nice. We took the ferry to Bremerton as it is M's Dad preferred scenic route. The views of the bay were really nice as we had exceptional weather (especially for the NW in this season). On our way back we had one of the most impressive views I've had on a US city skyline as the sun was setting and reflecting in the skyscraper's windows. You can judge for yourself.