Portland 2014 GBMU

Portland gets a lot of grief for being hipster central. I rather liked it and it's hipster vibe. Here's the thing: Hipsters like craft beer and artisan food. You know what I like? Craft beer and artisan food. If there's a lot of hipsters around, I'm going to have my pick. Just the thing for a vacation.

Good

• Restaurants. LA pointed out late in the trip that we had managed to go to the #1, #2, #5 and #8 highest rated restaurants in Portland. I confess, when she told me, I guessed at their order and got them wrong. All were good, and all were quite different from each other if you bother to look at the links.
  
• Ground Control, a bar combined with all the best arcade video games I grew up with. I managed to get all-time #3 on Robotron (and #1-5 for the daily) and played Addams Family for half an hour. Hell, I even did well at Rampage, and I never did well at Rampage. All it was missing was Xenophobe and Crazy Climber.
  
• The Kennedy School, a repurposed elementary school that was now a boutique hotel with a collection of pubs and restaurants. It was one of the places we were considering staying in, but it was expensive and booked solid.
  
• The Book of Mormon was every bit as funny and offensive as I'd hoped. They don't pull any punches. It'll be in Calgary in a few years - check it out.
  
• Our B&B host Gary, who was fun, generous, and loaded with awesome stories. Runs a nice B&B too. Hell, he even let us use his hot tub! Sadly I lost my hat.
  
• Powell's Books. 'nuff said.

Bad

• The heat. During the day it wasn't so bad. At night though, it was pretty bad, especially since I had the room at the top of the house and there was no AC. Gary did what he could to fix this (AC on the second night for the other rooms, which did absorb some heat from mine), but the first night was bad. The rest of the nights were still hot, but not so bad that I suffered.

Meh

• TikiKon. Oh, it was OK, but it was on the level of what Fen would call a relaxacon. Aside from the dealer room, a pool party we didn't attend, and a buffet, there wasn't much going on. Probably would have been fun if we were more plugged into tiki fandom. Good tunes though.
  
• What was billed as America's largest antique show. In fairness, it was very big. Sadly I lost my other hat.

Ugly

• Nothing!

Other Stuff
Got in a run; Checked out some nice neighbourhoods; Beer. All in all a decent trip and I'd go back to Portland again, though probably not in the near future.