Got up early Sunday morning to go to Stack's for breakfast before we started our drive to Portland. We got to Portland about 6:30 at night, then met up with my friend, Katie, from UofA (she was an advisor and I coordinated an outreach program under her). We had dinner at Henry's Tavern, where they had some pretty tasty burgers. It's been three years since we last saw Katie (met up with her on our honeymoon road trip), but there was a lot to catch up on.
Monday, Greg and I trekked around downtown Portland, including the Pearl District. According to Katie, the Pearl District used to be all industrial, but has gone through some urban renewal in the last decade or so. Now, there is a lot of neat stuff, including a former warehouse that has been converted to a housewares/antique store called Cargo. They had a mix of new-old (new furniture made to look old) and old-old (furniture that is actually old) pieces, including some apothecary chests (which I've been eyeing for a while now). I found this apothecary chest:
and really liked it. Really liked it. The lady who was helping us estimated that the chest was made around turn of the century, based on the wood used (Chinese Elm) and the style of construction (the drawers have a heavy wood bottom, as opposed to newer pieces that have a thinner plank of wood used for the bottom of the drawer). Each drawer has three compartments and there are 30 little drawers overall (= 90 compartments for craft stuff!). I also found - though I'm not sure who or at what point this was done - that the back of most of the drawers have a hand-written number painted in Chinese to indicate what order the drawers go in. Neat! I'm feeling all sorts of excited about this chest, not just for my craft room, but just because it's such a cool piece to begin with.
After that, we had Vietnamese food for lunch at Silk (yum). We also happened across Cupcake Jones, where we tried a Blueberries ‘n Cream cupcake and a mini-Peanut Butter Cup cupcake (also yum).
I saw on a map that there was a stored called the Button Emporium and Ribbonry in downtown Portland, after which I was like, we need to check this out. It was closed on Mondays though. Boo to that.
You can't tell in the pictures, but there was some major sweating going on while walking around Portland because the Pacific Northwest is apparently having a heat wave. Awesome! It's almost as hot as Phoenix.
Went to Pastini for dinner and had some pasta - where have we eaten in Portland that isn't good?
Also, we discovered that the train system in Portland is free for a large chunk of the downtown area. It was great for getting around and going to/from our hotel, which was across the river from downtown.
