Portland, Oregon
This city has captured our imagination. It's a decently sized city, but not too big. It's very walk-able, and bike friendly. Cars are constantly giving way to us, even when we aren't at a crossing.
It's progressive - known as the Silicon-Forest due to its tech industry and geography - and open minded. Plenty of pro-LGBTQ and "Black Lives Matter" posters everywhere. As mentioned, marijuana is legal and there is a craft brewery everywhere you look. And despite all this, not one dickhead in sight.
All in all, Portland could be described as a hipster's heaven. Which is funny because while the hipsters have set the culture, none of them can afford to live here anymore due to a recent influx of people from across the country - about 2000/month from what we've heard. Although how many leave soon after experiencing the weather remains to be seen.
We aim for one of the many cool districts for breakfast called Alberta. Its about a 30 min walk from our AirBnB. Alberta is a trendy arts district with cafes everywhere. We settle on one called "The Big Egg". It does the job, the winner being the coffee - locally roasted and smooth as silk.
We head straight for Forest Park - this would be our Waterfall Gully equivalent back home. The scenery is stunning, the trees are tall, the sun is out (which is rare in February) and every man and his dog is out walking his dog.
We complete a 2.2 mile loop with small peaks of the city from the elevated trail. We also stumble into someone with a Kelpie/Husky cross - a bit weird.
We walk all the way down to where we spotted a cafe on the way up. The neighborhood is pretty rich - massive houses, and still dogs everywhere you look. This explains how one city can have so many Doggy-day-care businesses!
We grab a coffee and sort out our plans for Seattle and do some blogging. Great spot for it.
We continue our trek back towards the city, wandering past the major stadium of Portland, home to their MLS team The Timbers. Unfortunately Portland doesn't have a MLB or NHL team :(
Ok, enough walking, time to sample some of the local brews. We stop in at Fat Head Brewery. The menu is massive - which can go one of two ways... We do a flight where we choose 5 beers to sample. We get to choose which beers to include, which is not an easy task. The list doesn't disappoint. Very impressive - nothing under 6% ABV though, so we need to get some food in the belly.
We head to the famous Rouge Brewery. This brand has a good presence in Australia, but is usually too expensive! Not the case here. We order another DIY flight and standard pub food to go with it. It hits the spot, although leaves us feeling very full and bloated. Ah, America. We officially sign up to the resistance and get our Rogue Nation membership cards and head back into the night.
Without a real destination in mind we wander through a few more districts and miraculously stumble back to Voodoo Donuts - what a surprise! We order and head back to our AirBnB but fall asleep before we can eat them. Those 30,000 steps (20kms+) caught up with us.