First, I need to give a shout out to my dear friend for even letting me (us) impose on her blogosphere. I basically told her that I was going to do an entry as a guest blogger about our trip to Portland, when we decided to go. There was our friend Alice, the lady of the blog, myself who I will refer to as K, and my friend T—my soul mate and if I was still a teen, I’d call her my BFF.
So the honours of trying to get the taste and feel of day 2 rests on solely on my He-man shoulders. After our crazy night thanks to mullet-man, the three amigas decided to devote the day to shopping, to “get it over and done with”. Yeah right, who am I kidding--- I love shopping as much as I love chocolate!!! After the car accident, we somehow thought that shopping would be the activity with the least amount of planning and thinking involved.
First though, we started off with our free, continental buffet breakfast at the Marriott. Ok, maybe because it’s vacay time, and it’s the three of us girls hanging out with good convo and laughs, but breakfast every day was fantastic! Did I mention it was free??!! Even their dairy seems to taste better—creamier yogurt, cream cheese, and butter. There was basically eggs, breads, fruit, yogurts, juices, muffins, waffles, and a different meat such as sausage patties or ham every day. A huge spread and no dishes to do afterwards—heaven.
So after our breakfast off we went to the Woodburn Outlets just outside of Portland. Let me say that we started off by giving ourselves 2 hours to shop and then we were to meet up again to see if we needed more time. After the 2 hours, much to me and T’s chagrin, we had only shopped in about 1/5th of the shops! It’s funny how you release 3 women into an outlet mall, and we all spread into different directions. T and I were able to somewhat stick together while shopping, and branched out every once in a while separately. Alice went out on her own, and she is like the wind when she shops. Similar to how she is at work, I must laugh when describing how she shops. She has her itinerary and list of who to shop for, and off she goes nonstop. In fact, T and I laughed out loud a few times because we would cross paths with Alice every once in a while in between shops, and literally, if we were lucky, Alice would wave to us. I was asking a question out loud of Alice, and turned around, and she was gone!! Like the wind I say!! After the 2 hours we stopped and had lunch at Subway—yes, my non-fave, Subway. There was a very limited food selection at the food court, and we didn’t want to waste time leaving the area to search for food. We shopped for another 3-4 hours, and at the end of the day, the various loot that we acquired filled up the trunk of T’s beamer. Tons of clothes for little ones, shoes, a blender and even a mini donut maker—yes, a donut maker!!! Makes you wanna go down to Portland yourself, doesn’t it?? I hit my exemption limit just shopping there.
Another highlight of day 2, was the fact that we were able to try some food from this BBQ food cart. I don’t care how great people say the food here is in Vancouver, when it comes to BBQ, we cannot even compare to our neighbours down south. This guy was so busy and we were there at about 5ish that he was almost sold out of everything! But we were able to order a pulled pork sandwich and hot link sausage (hot weiner in a bun) to share. We wanted to just have a little snack as we were planning to have dinner still. The pulled pork sandwich was to die for. Maybe it was because we were so excited from our good deal shopping, but that pulled pork sandwich was one the best sandwiches I have ever had. The pork was tender and juicy, there was a perfect amount of BBQ sauce, and the coleslaw accompanying it was crispy and had the right amount of ‘tang’.
So the honours of trying to get the taste and feel of day 2 rests on solely on my He-man shoulders. After our crazy night thanks to mullet-man, the three amigas decided to devote the day to shopping, to “get it over and done with”. Yeah right, who am I kidding--- I love shopping as much as I love chocolate!!! After the car accident, we somehow thought that shopping would be the activity with the least amount of planning and thinking involved.
First though, we started off with our free, continental buffet breakfast at the Marriott. Ok, maybe because it’s vacay time, and it’s the three of us girls hanging out with good convo and laughs, but breakfast every day was fantastic! Did I mention it was free??!! Even their dairy seems to taste better—creamier yogurt, cream cheese, and butter. There was basically eggs, breads, fruit, yogurts, juices, muffins, waffles, and a different meat such as sausage patties or ham every day. A huge spread and no dishes to do afterwards—heaven.
So after our breakfast off we went to the Woodburn Outlets just outside of Portland. Let me say that we started off by giving ourselves 2 hours to shop and then we were to meet up again to see if we needed more time. After the 2 hours, much to me and T’s chagrin, we had only shopped in about 1/5th of the shops! It’s funny how you release 3 women into an outlet mall, and we all spread into different directions. T and I were able to somewhat stick together while shopping, and branched out every once in a while separately. Alice went out on her own, and she is like the wind when she shops. Similar to how she is at work, I must laugh when describing how she shops. She has her itinerary and list of who to shop for, and off she goes nonstop. In fact, T and I laughed out loud a few times because we would cross paths with Alice every once in a while in between shops, and literally, if we were lucky, Alice would wave to us. I was asking a question out loud of Alice, and turned around, and she was gone!! Like the wind I say!! After the 2 hours we stopped and had lunch at Subway—yes, my non-fave, Subway. There was a very limited food selection at the food court, and we didn’t want to waste time leaving the area to search for food. We shopped for another 3-4 hours, and at the end of the day, the various loot that we acquired filled up the trunk of T’s beamer. Tons of clothes for little ones, shoes, a blender and even a mini donut maker—yes, a donut maker!!! Makes you wanna go down to Portland yourself, doesn’t it?? I hit my exemption limit just shopping there.
Another highlight of day 2, was the fact that we were able to try some food from this BBQ food cart. I don’t care how great people say the food here is in Vancouver, when it comes to BBQ, we cannot even compare to our neighbours down south. This guy was so busy and we were there at about 5ish that he was almost sold out of everything! But we were able to order a pulled pork sandwich and hot link sausage (hot weiner in a bun) to share. We wanted to just have a little snack as we were planning to have dinner still. The pulled pork sandwich was to die for. Maybe it was because we were so excited from our good deal shopping, but that pulled pork sandwich was one the best sandwiches I have ever had. The pork was tender and juicy, there was a perfect amount of BBQ sauce, and the coleslaw accompanying it was crispy and had the right amount of ‘tang’.
Being the hillbillies that we were, we got the guy to come out of his food cart and take a picture with us, shouting that we were from Canada. You’d think we came from Nanuvut and were visiting China or something, but the guy was friendly and game, giving out some warm Southern love.
We headed back to the hotel to drop off our loot and then were off again for more shopping. Yes, you read right, even more shopping. For you young inexperienced shoppers, you might think that 5-6 hours at an outlet mall was enough, but no, we were on a mission. Alice needed to get some treats for her kiddies, and we wanted to hit up Target. Have I mentioned yet that Portland is tax-free shopping?? With the Canadian dollar doing so well at the American prices, and Ben and Jerry’s ice cream at $2.50 a pint at regular price, K was in Asian-saving heaven. Getting to Target was not as smooth as the shopping. Suffice it to say that Alice has many varied skills that would enable her to whoop my butt at many things, especially any skills needed at work. A good map reader or internal GPS person she is not though. In fact, she had a name for the person who navigated beside T as she drove, and that person was the designated ‘star-gazer’. I was the ‘star-gazer’ because Alice fired herself. Let’s just say that what should have been a 15-20 minute drive along a freeway to Target ended up being a 45-50 minute drive through the burbs, on to some ghetto streets, and then up and down some hills before we reached destination point. As a result, we only had 1 hour and 15 minutes to shop before Target closed shop. Perhaps the limited time was what made Alice miss the fact that there was a second floor rife with children’s clothing and other goods. She did not realize there was a second floor until about 15 minutes to closing and T told her. I would have paid money to see the expression on her face, like the expression on people’s faces when they were told the world was actually round rather than square.
Those were basically the highlight moments of day 2. We had dinner at a swanky café afterwards who delightfully gave us our leftovers wrapped in tinfoil animals—a cat and mouse respectfully.
Those were basically the highlight moments of day 2. We had dinner at a swanky café afterwards who delightfully gave us our leftovers wrapped in tinfoil animals—a cat and mouse respectfully.
The food was ok but I think Alice and T were more impressed with the tinfoil animals as there was lots of photo taking. If the day had ended even right after our BBQ snack, I already would have been more than happy. The shopping was just that good. Oh----wait, how could I have forgotten??!! For those who appreciate the ‘extreme foodies’ even though we were beat tired, at around midnight after finishing our meals and driving, we also decided to hit up Voodoo Donuts before we got back to the hotel. Why such a big kafuffle over donuts you say?
(Editor's note: check out some of the other donuts that were available!)
Well, there was the Maple Bacon donut. Need I say more? Bacon-yum, maple-yum, donut-good. But we were so stuffed, we had to wait til the next day, yes a bit gross, to divvy up our Maple Bacon Donut, the Oreo Donut, and the Diablo Rex, a chocolate donut.
So you have to wait for the donut verdict in day 3, written by T, who can also rave about the shopping for books at Powell Books downtown.
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