Day 101 - Tillamook Creamery & Portland, OR

We left Newport and it was still foggy and cold outside. We had planned to continue along the 101 to Canon Beach which is known for the famous rock in the Goonies but as we were driving along, the weather was getting worse rather than better so we decided to change plans. Rather than driving a long way just to see some more white fog, we headed to Tillamook, a cheese factory that was recommended to us the night before by our friends in the bar.

It was a good decision to make the as a webcam showed the fog was so bad at Canon Beach, we would have been disappointed when we couldn't see the famous rocks.

Tillamook was a lot of fun. It is a huge site with a restaurant, multiple ice cream stands, a huge shop and a free self-guided tour of their cheese making factory with free samples. It was a weekday but the place was heaving, it was so busy, we didn't have the time to queue for the samples. Instead we bought a couple of small cheeses from the shop. We've struggled over here with finding strong tasting cheese, we thought that the Tillamook cheddar might change our perception of the cheeses in the US but it was fairly tasteless, nothing like the cheddar we have back home. We need to keep searching!

From Tillamook, we headed inland to Portland. We started off this morning in Newport where it was 55F and when we turned up in Portland, it was 91F, the good weather was finally back! 

During our journey to Portland, there were 2 things we learnt. 

1) There are a lot of small, independent road side coffee sellers in Oregon

2) You don't pump your own gas at the gas stations in Oregon, the pump jockies do this for you. 

We stayed in a small modern hotel called The Jupiter. Although the rooms were small, the beds were super comfortable and you could draw on the door. There were all sorts of extras in the room, many of which you had to pay for such as the wine and water but there was a free condom next to the bed. It was branded with the hotel logo so not one someone had left behind. It did make us wonder what type of establishment we were staying in. 

We only had an afternoon to check out Portland (PDX to the locals) so we grabbed an Uber to the North West 23rd area (known as Trendy-3rd). This is an arty area with a laid back feel. There were lots of boutique shops, many selling art and antiques and a couple of nice bars and restaurants.

We then walked to the downtown area which seemed really buzzing with people and shops. Lee found an app called Explore Local that we used to locate bars, shops, restaurants and entertainment either local to where we were standing or in an area we knew we wanted to head to. The app turned out to be really useful as given the limited time we had, we didn't want to be walking about searching for places to go. 

We quickly noticed that Portland has a lot of breweries and Lee couldn't help but stop off in one or two to try out the beer. With all the beer tasting he is doing, he'll be an expert by the time we come home! 

Next we visited the largest independent book store in the world, Powell's Books. We both picked up maps and agreed to split up to explore. Lee went off to the cat section and then to science section to look at the astronomy books and then listened to an author talking about her experiences of coming out as gay. I headed to toilets which took forever to find and then to the cookery section where I looked through the books planning all the foods I will be cooking when I am back in our kitchen. 

We spent 30 minutes in Powell and we probably saw less than 1% of the store between us. It is huge! 

For dinner, we picked up an Uber and headed over the river to South East Division Street. There were a number of bars and restaurants here but the one we were planning to go to was Pok Pok. This Thai restaurant chain which can now be found in several states, first started right here in Portland. We had to wait for a table so we went over the road to Pok Pok's bar called Whisky Soda Lounge. When our table was ready, they called the bar who then sent us across the road.

The food in Pok Pok was good. It wasn't like the Thai food we have had at home and having not been to Thailand, we can't tell you how authentic it was but the Fish Sauce Wings were really unusual but tasty and the curry really tender with a little kick.

After dinner, it was time to go back to the hotel to see whether we could find any other surprises in our room.