Day 49: Portland, OR (day 2)

In the morning, Jeanne leaves the house as we get up to have breakfast. We spend some time talking to Marie, sharing her personal story and taking about travels.

 

We then take the Blue Line. We miss the first train because Yellow canceled the transaction for some obscure reasons while buying our tickets. A reason not good enough to justify missing the train at least. We finally take the train, then the bus to Hawthorne District. The neighborhood has some good vintage clothes and antique furniture stores. The Bagdad theatre is right here too. It’s a theatre in bad shape that got bought and transformed into a cluster of shops, bars, theater projecting old movies and so on. Interesting!

 

We slowly move toward downtown, eating our peanut butter & jelly sandwich, decided to get some good food at one of the food carts. We take the bus and search for those carts. Yellow tricks Red into visiting the world’s smallest public garden, so he could take a picture of it. We end up at El Cubo de Cuba for some Cuban pork plate with black beans, rice and sweet potato tots. Delicious again.

 

We check out the free section of the Museum of Contemporary Craft, before messing up our beer plan. There is a Tuesday pint for $ 2.5 at Roots Organic Brewery. Unfortunately, it is way further than we thought, so we go back to our hosts’ place. After packing and saying good-bye, we leave in the middle of the afternoon and we drive in the direction of the Oregon Coast.

We stop at Winco, a store not as interesting as Fred Meyer, but with a gigantic section of bulk dry fruits and seeds. We make our way to Fred Meyer for our grocery shopping as we escape the suburbs, and we end up at the host’s place for tonight in McMinnville, OR, at the beginning of the evening. It is not the Oregon Coast yet, but a beautiful and large valley with some nice hills, especially once the sun is going down. And it’s in the middle of these hills that we meet Marvin and Grace.

We have a delicious feast outside before eating the apple crisp dinner inside. They grow their own grapes to eat, and they are delicious, the best grapes we ever had. Of course, the evening is filled with some great discussions and we end up in bed right before midnight.