Around the World

Wednesday (Travel Day) We had stayed up late the night before packing and cleaning, so when the alarm went off at 630a, I was less than thrilled. I got up, showered and drove the rental back to Hertz. The store didn't open till 8a (though the website said 730), so I walked across and dropped the key at the hotel across the street (a sign on the door had said to do so). I ordered an Uber and stood on the curb waiting, enjoying the last day of brisk weather. When I got back to the Airbnb, Lola and Billie were just out of the shower and getting dressed. In thirty minutes, we were out the door and into an Uber, headed to the airport. The airport in Portland is super easy to navigate and pretty small for large city. We got to our plane quickly. I was less than thrilled to realize the plane was a prop plane and we entered it by walking on the tarmac and up stairs. It was like 1950 all over again. The plane was a small one, with only 4 seats across. The flight to Seattle was a short one, ...

 Tuesday Again, this day was scheduled to be our trip to Seattle day, but after driving to the beach on Sunday, we decided to find something local and save Seattle for another trip entirely. So we decided to hit up OMSI - Oregon Museum of Science and Industry. We bought the tickets online the night before, so it was a breeze. Let me just say, having a site that allows ticket purchasing AND downloading to apple wallet is the way to go. OMSI advertised a dinosaur exhibit and Billie was pumped about it. When we got there, it was a little underwhelming. The large rubber dinosaurs had really limited movement and felt a little outdated. Billie was fine with it, but we breezed through the exhibit way faster than I had hoped for when purchasing the tickets. The rest of the permanent exhibit was limited to say the least. Some parts of the Museum were still closed due to COVID restrictions, so maybe that would have helped things, I don't know. We had purchased tickets for their IMAX but had ...

Monday Having been to the beach the day before, we decided to do another shopping day. We had budgeted enough cash to allow for it, so we were eager to spend the money in stores we didn't have locally. Our first stop was...Powell's City of Books again. Yeah, we sort of love this place. Hard to beat all the books. We wandered the aisles, looking for missed titles from previous days. Ended up picking up more books, of course. When we exited, I noticed another record shop down the road, so we walked down to Everyday Music and did some more record shopping. This place was definitely bigger and the previous shop and everyone found a record or two, including Bille, who picked up a Harry Styles record. Of course she did. After record hunting, Lola hit up Anthropologie while Billie and I went into a Starbucks. Billie grabbed a Peter Rabbit snack (sort of a pureed strawberry squeeze thing) and I got an iced coffee. We could have been in El Paso, honestly. Indoor seating was still closed...

Sunday (Mother's Day) Sunday was a weird day that went NOT according to our plan. We had originally decided to visit Seattle today, but when Josh proposed we go to the beach instead, we decided to take that route. In a previous trip to Disneyland, we had visited the coast, but we had been told the Pacific Northwest coast was a different look altogether. So Sunday morning was a slow start. We dragged our feet before finally hitting the road around 11a. The drive was around 2 hours and wound it's way through the forest all the way there. Hard to argue with the scenery on this route, particularly as we are from the Southwest and don't see much greenery! The road was oftentimes shrouded by towering vegetation, in some places even overhead like a canopy. It was absolutely stunning. Occasionally, the road would pop out next to a stream and would follow beside it, beautiful! When we arrived at the coast, we stopped at an outlet mall to wait for Josh and his family to arrive, we ha...

Saturday Portland is known for a lot of things: protests, hippie culture, weed, rain, bridges (so many bridges). But one of the things that I think of when I think of the city is the DIY culture that inhabits every corner. Artists dominate the local shopping scene and the branding is always super on point. Lola and I marveled at it as we walked the streets of the city, everything has a hyper-solid locally-branded look. So Saturday morning, I thought it would be a cool idea to hit up a local farmer's market and take a look at what local artisans had to offer. We headed towards the farmer's market on the PSU campus and...were pretty underwhelmed. Not because the wares were bad, but because it was all the wrong stuff. This was farmer's market with the emphasis on FARM - tons of veggies, raw honey, and a bunch of rustic loaves on display. Billie was unimpressed. So unimpressed that we made a single pass through the stalls and she was ready to go. I would be lying if I wasn'...

Friday Because we knew we would be in and around the city and without much knowledge of the public transportation system, we had decided to rent a car for our duration in the city. While buying the flights from Expedia, it had been offered as an option, so we grabbed it. As we neared departure, we realized the rental agency would be closed by the time we arrived in Portland, so I called ahead about pushing the pick-up date. The lady I spoke to was clearly under pressure when I called, first putting me on hold for an extended time, before quickly coming back on and jotting down my information in a way that didn't imply full focus. But I didn't worry about it at the time. When we got up, Billie and I ate cold pizza for breakfast and called an Uber to go pick up our rental. I could have walked to the spot, but Billie wanted to go and over a mile seemed like a big ask for her little legs. We took an Uber. When we got to the downtown agency, the man behind the counter was dealing wi...

Thursday (Travel Day) Sometimes you get caught by surprise when you travel. Something bad happens. Something costs a lot more than you budgeted. You forget to do something you should have before you left. Welp, this time it was Frontier Airlines screwing us over. When we had booked the trip, one of the big plusses was how cheap the flights were. All three of us were flying across the country for $600. It seemed too good to be true, AND IT WAS! As we checked in for our flights, Frontier asks if we are taking carry-ons on the flight. Well, yeah. Ok, that will be an upcharge. What about wanting to sit together? Well, we have a five year old, so yeah. That will also be an upcharge. By the time we were done finishing out the booking, we had dropped another $150. And don't get me wrong, maybe that's a completely reasonable price to pay for tickets, it was just frustrating that it felt dropped on us without warning. So Thursday we handed our house keys and the fate of our five dogs ov...