Portland - Day 4

Of course all good days must start with a good breakfast, so on Portland morning #4 we went to the delicatessen just next door to our hotel for a pretty traditional breakfast...other than my less traditional breakfast dog topped with cheddar, bacon, and eggs...difficult to eat but worth the effort

Before heading out for another day of adventure, we stopped by the "Keep Portland Weird" building to snap this necessary picture.

We then began the 90-ish minute drive to the coast. As always, the drive was beautiful. I also spent a majority of the drive reading How to be Parisian Wherever You Are, which I picked up at Powell's yesterday. What could be better than a scenic drive through Oregon and Paris-dreaming? idk

...and at last we reached the Cannon Beach community, a cute little area that also happens to be home to iconic views of the ocean. Today's rain impaired the view a bit, it was still pretty incredible.

You have no idea what I endured to get this next picture. Never in my life have I felt such strong, continuous wind. It was ridiculous. You could literally lean into the wind and not fall. On our way back to the car, some whale-watchers started making small talk with us, so we politely continued the conversation as long as we could stand the weather...but it was rough. When we did finally return to the car, we were soaking wet and freezing cold...but pretty nice picture, right?

After this, we decided it was time to warm up. We went to a coffee shop called Insomnia, which was near Cannon Beach. I think we all felt a bit better after a warm cup of coffee.

We then drove to the cutest lil' taco joint in all of the world, called ¿Por Qué No?.

I was pretty much already sold on its cuteness, but the delicious pineapple juice, guacamole, salsa, and tacos blew us all away too. I got one carnitas and one pescado. Both were fabulous, but I preferred the pescado (mainly because it was topped with pineapple and I loooove pineapple).

tip: If you can get yourself on a weird eating schedule, you can avoid massive crowds at popular places like this one.

Because coffee, guacamole, salsa, and tacos weren't enough, we continued on our food tour of Portland down the street to a bakery called JaCiva's. Lemme tell ya: this bakery doesn't mess around. They had three rooms: a wedding cake-consulting room (complete with elaborately-decorated cakes); a room filled with cases of fresh, yummy, chocolatey goodness; and a room of packaged chocolates in every size and shape imaginable.

The peanut butter mousse chocolate cupcake got my approval...

 Once we had eaten all we could, we drove to Alberta Street, where we shopped for a little bit before most things started to close. One of my personal favorite stores was a craft store (of course) that had wall of color-coordinated washi tape (heavenly, I know).

On the way back near our hotel, we stopped for a picture with this iconic Portland sign.

After this, Emily and I walked around and did some last-minute shopping. We both had decided to buy something we had seen yesterday, so we returned to those stores first. We managed to get to both just before they totally close up for the day, so that was a great success. Satisfied, we returned the hotel for about five minutes before deciding to walk to Forever 21 (only because we had been to most of the local boutiques near + local boutiques are quite expensive + Forever 21 is cheap + Portland Forever 21 is huuuuuge). We each bought a couple things, shocked at the reasonable prices in comparison to what we had been seeing in most of the boutiques.

We strayed from our usual Yelping-technique when deciding where to eat dinner tonight and instead listened to a bartender who told us to go to a pizza place called Oven and Shaker. It wasn't the best meal we've had, but you can't go too wrong with pizza.

With empty pockets (empty fanny pack actually) and full bellies, we returned to the Ace Hotel, our home away from home. In this sad moment we knew that our time in Portland had almost come to a closure. We walked up the three flights of squeaky stairs and into our very messy, but still very cute, room. We began the trying process of packing all we had brought and all we had bought into the bags in which we once barely fit only what we had brought. Portland has treated us very well, but all good things must come to an end (at least until we move here for good).