2023 Portland/Vancouver Trip
Aug. 8th, 2023 11:59 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jamesqI caught wind of one of my favourite artists coming to the pacific north west, and since she doesn’t tour often, I figured I’d jump on that. I had an option of staying in Portland or Seattle. I opted for Portland.
The flight was uneventful (got a plus seat for $40, which was barely worth it on a Dash-8. I got extra leg room, but no extra width. I was planning on using the Westjet connect service for the flight, so I brought my tablet Turns out this was a mistake, since that service wasn’t available on the plane. Thankfully I was reading Legends and Lattes, which is an awesome book BTW.
My hotel was going to be hella-expensive, so I decided to cheap out in other parts of the trip, like taking public transit from PDX to my hotel, which ended up being three buses. Thankfully, Portland has day passes for $5. I had a giant bag of American change (that security theatre tossed my luggage for, ironically missing my knife) I’d been saving for years, so I used that. Discovered that you couldn’t put more than 30 coins into the machine at the airport though, so I had to try twice without using all my nickels and dimes.
My hotel was McMenamins Kennedy School (an old elementary school retrofitted to be a bougie hotel). About twice as much money as I usually pay, but it was walking distance to the theatre at least. Pls it’s super nice and I really do like it. Just wish I was rich is all.
I kinda crashed in my room for a few hours instead of trying to find some lunch (the hotel has several restaurants, and room service, so mostly it was just me being lazy). When the evening came, I decided to hit a local brewery on the way to downtown for a flight.
I ended up at Broadside Brewery on Dekum street (best beer, Wild & Crazy Kids, an Imperial stout). Most of their beer was good, and they had a decent selection of non-IPAs. The joint had a big patio and friendly staff. Give it a try if you’re in the neighbourhood (or other neighbourhoods, they’ve got a bunch of locations in Portland).
I was sitting at the bar minding my own business, when some old dude sat next to me, and asked me how I was doing. Now if you know me, that’s generally something that gets my anxiety up, and I’ll often react poorly. This time though, I thought, “you’re on vacation, and you’re not likely to really talk to anyone for the next three days except service people. What’s the harm in having a conversation with some rando at a bar?”
So I drank my beer, and had a nice chat with Bill (who admitted that he did this sort of thing all the time). It was a pleasant, paper-thin conversation about the weather and travelling. Bill and his wife were originally from England somewhere, and had emigrated to the US as young newlyweds (Bill was in early retirement, so a robust late-60s).
I can’t remember much else, aside from enjoying myself. I finished my beers, shook his hand, and caught my bus downtown to grab an upscale dinner.
The upscale restaurant I found was Q. Before going there, I double checked that their name had nothing to do with Qanon. It did not, as they were named about two years prior to Qanon becoming a thing.
Everyone on the staff was a delight. I got a nice seat facing the kitchen, so I could watch all the food getting their final plating before heading out to the customers (or being based forward to me, in the case of my own food).
On the recommendation of the host, I got the grilled pork belly to start. My entree was the house made saffron tagliatelle, washed down with a Sunlight wheat beer from Vatietal Beer Company. I finished the whole thing off with a really good Old Fashioned.
Q was expensive, but worth every penny. Check it out if you’re in Portland.
Next up I wandered over to Powell's Books, a must see for any trip to Portland. I think I bought one book for myself, and a whole bunch of birthday presents for the Port Wood folks. Books, the gift of choice for discerning nerds.
I wound out the evening at 10 Barrel Brewing (best beers (a tie): Raspberry Sour Crush - a fruited sour, and Smooth (feat. Rob Thomas) - Japanese rice lager ). I asked if they had flights and they said they did. Specifically they had one flight, with every beer they had. And now I can say I've had a flight with ten beers. Thankfully the beers were only three ounces each, so I walked away having had the equivalent of two "pints". Still, it had been a long and busy day. I lyfted back to the Kennedy School and had a good night's sleep.
The next morning, during my travels, I bought a pair of the Mega Millions lottery. This is the one that was a record breaking $1.5 Billion. I got one for myself, and one for my buddy G. What shocked me was that the tickets were $1 each. That's it. TL;DR: neither of us won.
(my one souvenir)
The remainder of the day was spent taking a long walk along Alberta Avenue, which is one of Portland's arty neighbourhoods. I had a nice breakfast, found some cool shops, and ended up downtown, where I spent an hour playing video games at a barcade. I ended up back at the hotel about two hours before the show and took a nap out of the heat.
Finally, the time had come for my concert. I dressed up nice, walked the kilometre to the venue (The Alberta Rose Theatre) and settled in to watch Vienna Teng.
First though, we got opening act Stephanie Schneiderman, who was pretty good, but I'm not familiar with her.
Vienna Teng came out and sat in a nest of instruments and got people to shout out suggestions for songs to sing. Not sure if this was just banter, or if it did affect the set order. I do know that she played lots of her standards, a few new songs (including an amusing ditty she wrote for her toddler called "When it's time to leave, always have a pee").
Seeing her live was a joy. She's a great performer, even outside of a studio. I'm happy to go. Except, she wound up the show and hadn't played my favourite song! Apparently it's not just my favourite, because it was one of the two songs for the encore.
I left the Alberta Rose Theatre happy in my heart. The sun had gone down, so the heat had subsided to pleasantly warm. I walked back to my hotel and ordered an expensive burger at the bar.
To summarize the hotel, I probably shouldn't have stayed there - it was an expensive two nights, for average hotel rooms (even thought the hotel is wonderful to stay at, and has much better rooms). In the end, I had stayed there before so it wasn't special. All it really had was proximity to my concert. I could have stayed at a nearish motel for 1/3 the price and used a fraction of the savings on taxis.
Next morning I took a bus to Vancouver, hung out with my Vancouver peeps for a few peeps, had a bar crawl, watched Barbie, and basically chilled.
I failed to land a premium seat on the way back, and since I was watching Barbie when check in started, I got stuck with a middle seat in the back of the plane. That said, boarding was a dream, everyone was calm and orderly, and we pulled back a few minutes early. I grabbed a chicken sandwich, wandered over to my gate to see they were already boarding (indicating that the previous flight was not late). I got in line, and got on the plane. The pilots practically glided into our gate with no delays whatsoever.
Here's the really weird thing - when the seatbelt light turned off, hardly anyone stood up. Maybe five people throughout the plane, and two of those were from the front row. They openned the door to let us out and everyone... just stayed seated until the way was clear. Numerous people commented on this. When it got to our row, we stood up, grabbed our stuff, and left. It's like every single person on the plane was rational. I got to the baggage claim, wandered around for a bit until I found the "Fragile" section. Within two minutes, they opened it up, and I was one of the first people to get my luggage.
All in all, it was one of the most seamlessly easy flights I've ever experienced, even with being stuck in a middle seat. It's like the universe wanted to make up for it.
The flight was uneventful (got a plus seat for $40, which was barely worth it on a Dash-8. I got extra leg room, but no extra width. I was planning on using the Westjet connect service for the flight, so I brought my tablet Turns out this was a mistake, since that service wasn’t available on the plane. Thankfully I was reading Legends and Lattes, which is an awesome book BTW.
My hotel was going to be hella-expensive, so I decided to cheap out in other parts of the trip, like taking public transit from PDX to my hotel, which ended up being three buses. Thankfully, Portland has day passes for $5. I had a giant bag of American change (that security theatre tossed my luggage for, ironically missing my knife) I’d been saving for years, so I used that. Discovered that you couldn’t put more than 30 coins into the machine at the airport though, so I had to try twice without using all my nickels and dimes.
My hotel was McMenamins Kennedy School (an old elementary school retrofitted to be a bougie hotel). About twice as much money as I usually pay, but it was walking distance to the theatre at least. Pls it’s super nice and I really do like it. Just wish I was rich is all.
I kinda crashed in my room for a few hours instead of trying to find some lunch (the hotel has several restaurants, and room service, so mostly it was just me being lazy). When the evening came, I decided to hit a local brewery on the way to downtown for a flight.
I ended up at Broadside Brewery on Dekum street (best beer, Wild & Crazy Kids, an Imperial stout). Most of their beer was good, and they had a decent selection of non-IPAs. The joint had a big patio and friendly staff. Give it a try if you’re in the neighbourhood (or other neighbourhoods, they’ve got a bunch of locations in Portland).
I was sitting at the bar minding my own business, when some old dude sat next to me, and asked me how I was doing. Now if you know me, that’s generally something that gets my anxiety up, and I’ll often react poorly. This time though, I thought, “you’re on vacation, and you’re not likely to really talk to anyone for the next three days except service people. What’s the harm in having a conversation with some rando at a bar?”
So I drank my beer, and had a nice chat with Bill (who admitted that he did this sort of thing all the time). It was a pleasant, paper-thin conversation about the weather and travelling. Bill and his wife were originally from England somewhere, and had emigrated to the US as young newlyweds (Bill was in early retirement, so a robust late-60s).
I can’t remember much else, aside from enjoying myself. I finished my beers, shook his hand, and caught my bus downtown to grab an upscale dinner.
The upscale restaurant I found was Q. Before going there, I double checked that their name had nothing to do with Qanon. It did not, as they were named about two years prior to Qanon becoming a thing.
Everyone on the staff was a delight. I got a nice seat facing the kitchen, so I could watch all the food getting their final plating before heading out to the customers (or being based forward to me, in the case of my own food).
On the recommendation of the host, I got the grilled pork belly to start. My entree was the house made saffron tagliatelle, washed down with a Sunlight wheat beer from Vatietal Beer Company. I finished the whole thing off with a really good Old Fashioned.
Q was expensive, but worth every penny. Check it out if you’re in Portland.
Next up I wandered over to Powell's Books, a must see for any trip to Portland. I think I bought one book for myself, and a whole bunch of birthday presents for the Port Wood folks. Books, the gift of choice for discerning nerds.
I wound out the evening at 10 Barrel Brewing (best beers (a tie): Raspberry Sour Crush - a fruited sour, and Smooth (feat. Rob Thomas) - Japanese rice lager ). I asked if they had flights and they said they did. Specifically they had one flight, with every beer they had. And now I can say I've had a flight with ten beers. Thankfully the beers were only three ounces each, so I walked away having had the equivalent of two "pints". Still, it had been a long and busy day. I lyfted back to the Kennedy School and had a good night's sleep.
The next morning, during my travels, I bought a pair of the Mega Millions lottery. This is the one that was a record breaking $1.5 Billion. I got one for myself, and one for my buddy G. What shocked me was that the tickets were $1 each. That's it. TL;DR: neither of us won.
(my one souvenir)
The remainder of the day was spent taking a long walk along Alberta Avenue, which is one of Portland's arty neighbourhoods. I had a nice breakfast, found some cool shops, and ended up downtown, where I spent an hour playing video games at a barcade. I ended up back at the hotel about two hours before the show and took a nap out of the heat.
Finally, the time had come for my concert. I dressed up nice, walked the kilometre to the venue (The Alberta Rose Theatre) and settled in to watch Vienna Teng.
First though, we got opening act Stephanie Schneiderman, who was pretty good, but I'm not familiar with her.
Vienna Teng came out and sat in a nest of instruments and got people to shout out suggestions for songs to sing. Not sure if this was just banter, or if it did affect the set order. I do know that she played lots of her standards, a few new songs (including an amusing ditty she wrote for her toddler called "When it's time to leave, always have a pee").
Seeing her live was a joy. She's a great performer, even outside of a studio. I'm happy to go. Except, she wound up the show and hadn't played my favourite song! Apparently it's not just my favourite, because it was one of the two songs for the encore.
I left the Alberta Rose Theatre happy in my heart. The sun had gone down, so the heat had subsided to pleasantly warm. I walked back to my hotel and ordered an expensive burger at the bar.
To summarize the hotel, I probably shouldn't have stayed there - it was an expensive two nights, for average hotel rooms (even thought the hotel is wonderful to stay at, and has much better rooms). In the end, I had stayed there before so it wasn't special. All it really had was proximity to my concert. I could have stayed at a nearish motel for 1/3 the price and used a fraction of the savings on taxis.
Next morning I took a bus to Vancouver, hung out with my Vancouver peeps for a few peeps, had a bar crawl, watched Barbie, and basically chilled.
I failed to land a premium seat on the way back, and since I was watching Barbie when check in started, I got stuck with a middle seat in the back of the plane. That said, boarding was a dream, everyone was calm and orderly, and we pulled back a few minutes early. I grabbed a chicken sandwich, wandered over to my gate to see they were already boarding (indicating that the previous flight was not late). I got in line, and got on the plane. The pilots practically glided into our gate with no delays whatsoever.
Here's the really weird thing - when the seatbelt light turned off, hardly anyone stood up. Maybe five people throughout the plane, and two of those were from the front row. They openned the door to let us out and everyone... just stayed seated until the way was clear. Numerous people commented on this. When it got to our row, we stood up, grabbed our stuff, and left. It's like every single person on the plane was rational. I got to the baggage claim, wandered around for a bit until I found the "Fragile" section. Within two minutes, they opened it up, and I was one of the first people to get my luggage.
All in all, it was one of the most seamlessly easy flights I've ever experienced, even with being stuck in a middle seat. It's like the universe wanted to make up for it.
