Portland

This past weekend was a long holiday weekend in British Columbia so we road tripped to Portland, OR, one of our favorite towns. It seems that other BCers had the same idea because we kept running into them -- at the border, where we waited an hour... on the streets, where we kept hearing "eh"... and sitting in a restaurant, where our table neighbors were a woman who is a patient at Keith's clinic and a nice couple that lives around the corner from us.

We stayed in a funky hotel downtown called The Nines, which was really cool. If you're ever in Portland, stay there.

It has a huge atrium with a restaurant, bar and lots of seating areas that looks like this:

We spent both Saturday and Sunday evenings there letting Luke explore while we had drinks and met some nice couples, including a fun couple from Chicago who were doing the same thing with their little guy. See the white chairs near the center of the room? That was our post. Luke was the mayor of the place, wandering up to anyone who paid him a little attention and charming them silly.

We love all of the unique Portland neighborhoods and spent time wandering around them, getting ideas for our new house in the furniture & lighting shops, and eating in some great local restaurants. Plus, it's the best town on the planet for local microbrew beer and pinot noir, which we love, so we tried our best to take advantage of that while remaining responsible parents. I think we did a good job :-)

The weather was typical Portland (cool and rainy with moments of extreme downpour), but you just stop being bummed out by that when you live in the northwest, so it was fine.

Luke was a trooper the whole weekend, from the long drive, to staying up a little too late, to trekking around town hidden under his stroller rain cover. In fact, he seemed to have a great time.

Here is a cute photo of Keith and Luke in our room, which was big on turquoise velvet. I wouldn't choose it for my house, but it worked here.