Spring

Yes the cherry trees are flowering again !

This is like 2 blocks south from our building :).

Preparing for Halloween

Last weekend we went to the pumpkin patch, got lost in the Maize (corn maze) and brought back a 15 kilos and a 5 kilos pumpkins. It took us about 1 hour to get out, and we tried quite hard. The maze was really large :). You can see here the girls happy to finally exit.


Pumpkins everywhere


Tonight, while waiting for my carbonade flamande to cook I carved the small one, say hi to happy Jack !


More pictures here.

Anna and Danny's wedding

This weekend was the day for them, it started with a nice ceremony in Peninsula park right next to their home, driven by MC Allen and continued at the Bridgeport brewery downtown. We had a great time.

Walking down the aisle


Kissing


Married !!!

The rest of the ceremony pictures are here.

Independence day

Yesterday for the 4th of July, Anna and Danny invited us at their house for a chicken roast party to celebrate the Independence day. As we arrived, I noticed Danny in a corner in front of THAT:

Yes he overdid himself and there was clearly some advanced engineering and thinking that had been going on. He had been patiently rotating the chicken by 90 degrees clockwise every 3 minutes precisely for the past 2 hours and a half and regularly measuring the temperature with a meat thermometer. I was clearly impressed and I was not the only one drooling nearby.

After another half an hour of slow roasting, we enjoyed some nice and juicy chicken with some Cincinnati BBQ sauce (it was really good and I'm not a fan of BBQ sauce usually).
We took our time, enjoying a not-so-sunny-afternoon chatting, tasting some more summer ales and then proceeded to play ladder toss:

M and I lost our game against a highly competitive team :). It felt very nice, we were playing on the front-yard right by the sidewalk, one neighbor stopped to play a game with us, passer-by were asking about the game, the kids next door were watching us.
As the night started to come, the fireworks started. I learned that they are kind of forbidden in Oregon, you can't buy fireworks that go any higher than a few feet, and overall they have to be pretty weak. I was getting ready to be disappointed when the 2 neighbors essentially started a competition that would last for the next 2 hours, playing at who's going to fire the biggest fireworks. It was amazing (and clearly illegal), some were launching up to probably 50m or higher in the sky and triggering multiple flower explosions, and it was going on and on, bigger and bigger. We all decided that next year we would all team up together, travel to Washington and buy some very large amount of big, nice and illegal firework and would participate to the neighborhood festivities by blowing up stuff, like everybody else. Yeah, nobody would really have believed fireworks were illegal in Oregon, and it was not just our 2 neighbors, it was the entire city that was firing up big stuff at each intersection :). Anyways, we had tons of fun ! More pics here.

NAOBF

Yesterday, after picking 6kg of raspberries in Sauvie Island, we headed to Overlook park in Portland for the North American Organic Beer Festival. It was conveniently located on the yellow MAX line which passes close to our place so we could just ride the tram there, we actually met our friends in the MAX as they had found parking only quite far away.
Like most beer festivals here, the first thing you're being asked before getting in is your ID, if you're over 21 you'll get a bright wristband. The next stop is to buy tokens and a cup if you intend to try the beers. It's 6$ for the cup and 1$ per token which gets you one sample to try (4 tokens get you a full glass). Once our tokens collected, we headed for the shade of a very large tree to study the beer list in order to chose what we wanted to try. The printed list that you get there has more details like a description of the flavors, the ingredients and the level of bitterness on the IBU scale.

Once you've figured out which one you want, you wander around and try to locate where the line for the brewery you're interested in is.

Once found, you wait hoping they don't run out :), or jump to the shortest line and try something random. Once at the counter you hand 1 or 4 tokens to the person that is pouring the beer of your choice, done. As you can see here, "no wristband, no beer"

Overall it was quite nice to hang with friends in a park, trying out new beers and looking at how happy everybody was, listening to the live bands and watching the kids play around even though I preferred the winter beers (our last beer fest was the winter one). Pictures of the happy participants here.
We even got free bread !

For Tristan

Last time I tried to bring friends to the fire station, the trucks were out. Today they came straight home after the fire alarm rang. Thankfully it was a small fire and not on our floor, and the time out waiting for them to inundate the floor and the one below gave me the opportunity to take pictures of the trucks.

You can check the rest of the series here.

Ecola Park

I am still trying to go through the pictures I took while Fifille was here. Here is one from Ecola Park I like (I recommand looking at the large version).


And here the classic view towards Cannon Beach from Ecola.

Fall Creek Falls

I had a hike as a Bachelor Party (to the disappointment of some). It was great, the falls were quite impressive with all the snow-melt that has been going on lately.


We finished the hike in the snow and we ended up playing a bit the local favorite lumberjack baseball. Danny won by picking the largest trunk around to swing.


Melvin sneaking around with a mini snowball.


Everybody else: guess who is who.


On the way back we stopped at Walking Wan brewery and finished the night at Deschutes brewery. Good friends, good outdoors, good beer, great day.

Visitors

Last weekend, a bunch of visitors arrived. We took them around quite a bit. Here they are in the Columbia gorges.


A lot of things have been going on as you'd probably guess, I'll post more complete updates (like pictures of my great bachelor hike) as things settle.

Angel's Rest

Last weekend I had a visitor at home and took him on a hike on Saturday with a group of local friends (while M. was slaving away working on our escort and table cards in Seattle with K.). I picked Angel's rest because it was one of the few short hikes I had not done in the gorges and the view from atop was supposed to be beautiful. I wasn't disappointed, the weather was amazingly sunny and warm, the trail up nice and steep and the view... amazing. Only downside: it was a bit too popular.


Great trail in the forest.


Great view.


Great Company.

The rest of the pictures can be found here.

Portland Japanese Garden

Yesterday was a beautiful spring day in Portland, the warm sunshine was enticing us to spend more time out. We had convinced Ian and Janel to tag come with us to the Japanese Garden in the hope to see the Sakura trees all pink (they were originally headed for the Chinese Garden). Once we got there I was a bit disappointed because there was only one Sakura flowering in the entire garden, but it seemed we came during the most popular day of the year. The garden was swarmed by photographers with tripods and SLR, snapping every corner of the peaceful garden to death. Ian and myself proceeded to imitate them while M and J were going around enjoying the place.

The light was great in the shady areas. It looks quieter on the pictures than it actually was unfortunately.

The Camelias were all out flowering.

We finished the afternoon in the Rose Garden, unfortunately the roses had just been pruned, but it was still enjoyable as we were surrounded by all the other flowers.

We finished the day going to the theater to watch Alice in Wonderland (Johnny Depp is great there, as usual).

Already Spring ?

It's been a few days that we've noticed on the side of the roads that trees seemed to believe spring has started. We can see all over the place cherry trees fully flourishing, almost insulting the winter with their pinkness. This afternoon I decided I would go on a walk around the neighborhood to try to capture some of the spring spirit. I didn't have to go very far, right around the corner there was this little plaza with a modern urban "art" sculpture surrounded by cherry blossoms. A woman and her dog were reading there enjoying the view.

You can even see our apartment in the background, we're living on the facing corner at the 10th floor of the greenish tower in the background.

The sculpture is entitled Leland #1, and I have to admit I'd never have thought of taking its picture if it weren't for the surrounding pink.

Everybody was walking their dog around or were enjoying the air there and felt quite chatty so I ended up in more than one conversation. I probably chatted 15 minutes with that 88 years old tomorrow man that was telling me how he had never seen spring that early here and he had been around for quite a while (he talked me about his first memories of Oregon when he came from Ohio in the 1940s). Like him, I find it hard to imagine living in Portland without a view on Mount Hood...

Weekend in the mountain

We just spent a 3 days weekend with a group of friends up in the mountain in Rhododendron. We skied, enjoyed the company, drank some beer while relaxing in the hot tub of the nice house we rented, and warmed up around a large fire.

There wasn't any snow at the base, but their was a lot of fresh snow up at Meadows. I guess all that rain we endured the past week actually was good for something.

We were right by the river, in the middle of the forest.

Simpatica Dining Hall

Yesterday after a long and tough day I felt like doing something nice to start the weekend well, and I had received a few "dining out coupons" for my birthday so it was a perfect occasion.

Last week when looking for a brunch place I happened to learn about Simpatica dining hall, we didn't go for brunch last week because they serve it only on Sundays but I remembered they were serving dinners on Fridays and Saturdays evenings so we could try it. We also liked the concept of a restaurant that operates only for 3 meals a week, where everybody sits at the same table and where there is no menu. You arrive at 7:30 and everybody will be served the same thing at the same time. In more than 4 years of existence they've never served the same meal twice and you can know ahead the menu of the day by checking their website or subscribing to their mailing list. We were lucky to get a sit as we called barely one hour ahead.



The hall is located on the east side, kind of hidden at the end of a corridor in a building. The room is L shaped, one side is an open kitchen and the other side has the 2 tables. We were sited right next to a very friendly couple which we happened to have so much in common with that it made for fantastic company throughout the dinner. The food was simple, fresh and delicious. Their wine recommendations with each of the 4 courses was very appropriate and they were willing to split the wine glasses between each of us so we could have the perfect match for each course. I won't describe the meal as anyways you won't have the same one if you go but it was worth it. The price at 35$ a meal is not cheap, but for what you get is quite reasonable, same thing for the wines at 8$ a glass.

Broder

This morning we slacked quite a bit in bed, once we finally got out we decided to go for a brunch and try out some new place. Not that we're getting tired of VQ, but some diversity never hurts. After a bit of browsing on Yelp, I settled on Broder, a Scandinavian Brunch and Breakfast place on the east side not far from our New Seasons grocery store. We headed there just before noon and found a tiny place that was packed with a gigantic waiting list. We took advantage of the nice weather to take a walk around the pretty neighborhood. We really like this area, the only inconvenient for us is that commute from their to work would probably be a bit too long :(. Anyway, after like 30 minutes we got our seats to try some pretty decent brunch. Michelle's dish was a bit too salty but mine was totally worth it.

The place was quite nice and packed with east side hipsters (my pictures aren't showing it, I was feeling uncomfortable stuffing my lens in their faces). The kitchen was just behind the bar so we could enjoy the sight of the hyperactive cooks. It was quite a relaxing time enjoying Stumptown coffee.


Once done, we stopped by next door where I got a long due haircut, then shopped at New Seasons on our way home. Quite a nice low key Saturday after a long and busy week.

Ski at Meadows

We originally wanted to go to ski on the 2nd but we felt kind of lazy so we postponed it. Sunday morning we weren't that much more enthusiastic but we still ended up going. We drove to Mt Hood Meadows, taking an unoptimal route for the first time (kind of wasted 20 min but it won't happen again) and realized the drive was really not bad.

Once there I was surprised by the organization of things, which is quite efficient compared to French ski resorts. You end up buying your pass and renting your gear at the same place, things are pipelined and rather fast, and very conveniently located to take the lifts. It took us probably just 15-20 minutes to get ready. We started at 11 and stopped at 5 and had a great day skiing and trying the various slopes. The resort isn't very big but it's big enough to not get bored (especially that the hardest tracks were closed so we still have a lot to see in further visits).

The landscape was quite nice, with the sun peaking once in a while from under the clouds. Here you can see Mt Adams. You can see the pictures of the happy skiers here.

Jade Tea House and Patisserie

After a nice New Year's Eve party at the Steiner's we overslept quite a bit this morning to start the year well. I felt lazy about cooking from an empty fridge so I looked around for a place to have a late lunch at. M wanted some Thai food, and I ended up picking the Jade Tea House and Patisserie. It doesn't really sound like a place that would serve lunch but they do and it is actually really good. The place is kind of "cafe" style, you order your food at the counter and take it to your table. It is located in Sellwood, a SE neighborhood that seems quite nice and that we hadn't visited so far.
The inside of the place is very warm and felt cozy with the rain pouring outside, the staff is very nice and after chatting a bit I discovered they're coming from Vietnam and all speak French. We also tried their macarons, and I have to say that they're the best ones we tried after the ones from La Durée in Paris (but thisis kind of an unfair comparison). They have a very large selection of teas, and the one we tried under the waitress recommendation was really good !


This place gets a "we'll come back and bring friends with us" kind of recommendation from us. Thumbs up.

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.