Pacific North Wonderland Day Three: Tattoos and Food in Portland

We woke up on the third day of our vacation in our little farm house on Sauvie Island. It had a tiny kitchen space that we really enjoyed. Travis likes to pretend he would love to live in a place this small. But his love of kitchen gadgets would not work out well here.

I cracked up at his very balanced breakfast. Half of a western veggie burger, a vegan cheese stick, two donuts and half of an apple fritter. (I'm still dreaming about those cheese sticks. How did they do it???)

Mine was a little better. The other half of the fritter, a cream filled donut and some cantaloupe. 

One of the best features of the place we stayed at was their hound dog Ruby! She was so sweet, this day she was across the field when she saw us, so she ran to us baying the whole way! She was rewarded for her greet with butt scritches from Travis. They keep a jar of treats in the guest house, and Ruby comes by several times a day to get one. She just looks in the door, you throw her a treat and she moves on. I loved it!

Our first stop of the day was Powell's Books, a HUGE independent bookstore. This place was super awesome and super overwhelming. We barely scratched the surface.

Travis got lost in the sci-fi section, and ended up with a copy of Ringworld by Larry Niven. I wandered into the YA section and saw the new Rainbow Rowell book was out! I had forgotten about it, so I snatched it up and ended up finishing it before our vacation was done. Guys, it was wonderful! If you loved Fangirl like I did, run, don't walk to get it!

If we lived in the area, we would frequent Powell's for sure. I loved all the employee recs and hand drawn signs, there was even a photo of Spock surrounded by fake flowers in the Sci Fi section. Travis and I both wish there was a place like it near us.

Travis is a very good sport and travel partner for me. He is pretty happy doing whatever, but I made sure to put some Travis-centric stops on my itinerary this trip. We went to several outdoor stores and browsed knives and bags (his favorite things). I only wish I had noticed they have a Timbuk2 store! That is maybe his favorite brand, and we didn't have time. We did have time for Poler, which has the cutest outdoor stuff! I ended up getting one of their Rambler backpacks. They had some really awesome Pendleton beach towels, but we didn't really need them.

We went to Chrome Industries too. I took selfies while he looked at bags and talked to the guys working there about fanny packs.

Next, we went to Scapegoat Tattoo so I could get some work done by Silje Hagland! I've been following her on Instagram forever and was so happy I was able to get an appointment while we were in the area.

I got this kitty off of her Halloween flash sheet. Isn't it sweet? She ended up having some more time later in the day for Travis to get something out of her book, so we said "goodbye for now" and went out to get some lunch. 

The shop assistant (or manager) suggested we try out the Bye and Bye. (His name was Travis Coe! We were freaking out because my Travis is Travis Cole)

This was another place where everything is vegan but it doesn't explicitly say so on the menu. They had pretty recently started offering lunch so it was deserted when we got there. I loved the decor!

I started with their Bye and Bye cocktail and it was delicious! Peach vodka, peach bourbon, lemon, cranberry juice and soda. It was also HUGE and I was a little tipsy for a while after this. For lunch I got the BBQ platter, which included my first taste of collard greens. I am aware that it is crazy for a Tennesseean to have her first greens in Oregon, but no one in my family makes them. They were GOOD! Travis got a vegan frito pie. Mmm, another wonderful restaurant. If we lived in Portland, it would be so hard not to eat out all the dang time!

I wrote postcards while we were sitting there. One card was really slick so my felt tip marker writing ran. I wrote over it with a ball point. It looked crazy, I couldn't believe it when it made it through the mail!

It turned out we were near a cute store I wanted to go to called Darling Distraction so we walked around for a while and browsed in a bunch of different stores. I loved this wallpaper!

I wanted to buy everything they had! I contented myself with a few patches and some gifts for my friends. (I went a little patch crazy on this trip, I think I have enough for two (or three) jackets now!)

We went in the coolest art store called Collage! It was full of so much fun stuff, like tiny woodland things, a Japanese section, fine art supplies, dia de los muertos stuff...

And a huge wall of washi tape! Seriously, everything was better in the PNW.

We walked past this wall and had to take photos. This message seemed very poignant to me at the time. "You are confined only by the walls you build yourself."

We ended up passing another place I kept hearing about, Back to Eden bakery. We enjoyed vegan ice cream and a little Boston cream pie.

Our last stop before we headed back for Travis' tattoo appointment was House of Vintage. The main reason I wanted to stop there was they have a real photo booth. (there were lots of them in Portland! And with credit card machines!)

It turned out to be a HUGE store full of mostly vintage clothes. It was pretty overwhelming!

I was able to ferret out a Dream Pet of course. Look at her beautiful lips!

And there was that beautiful machine!

Travis found this coat and tried to convince me to buy it because it looks like the one Jemaine has. Nice try! It actually would usually be a great argument, but we had bought him a vintage plaid coat just the day before.

He made me take a photo of this rack of jorts too. Hah!

Here is Travis getting tattooed by Silje. It is fun to get work while we're traveling! I'm going to try and get stuff done on our trips from now on (at least in the cooler months. I love swimming to much to get tattoos in the summer)

Here is what he got. Not a great photo, but look at how cute it is! I love it. 

We had a great three days in Portland, and can't wait to go back! I'll be back soon to tell you about the next leg of our trip, Orcas Island!

Pacific North Wonderland Day Two: Portland, again!

Coming back tomorrow to finish that post turned into two weeks, oops! Things have been so weird and great and terrible lately. But that is another story for another time. I need to tell you more about our Pacific North West trip! Because it was amazing, and I'm so glad we didn't cancel it after the insane October we had. 

So, back to where we were. This is the second part of our first full day in Portland. You can see part one here. We join our heroes at lunch, at Vtopia, the vegan CHEESE SHOP.

I was very excited about visiting this place. Fancy vegan cheese is usually amazing! We ended up not getting a cheese plate, which I kind of regret. I would have especially liked to try that macadamia and cashew Camembert.

The best thing we had was the fancy mac and cheese. Oh man! It was so creamy, and whatever they used for the "bacon" was just perfect. If we lived nearby I would be getting a big bowl of that to go whenever I could. Mmmmmmm.
To the left you can see my little trip journal. I usually forget, but it is so fun to make one with Travis. We write down everything we see, funny convos we overhear, food we eat. When I read back over it there are so many things I've already forgotten about!

We also got panini sandwiches that were just ok. I really wanted to try the soft pretzels, but another couple in the shop got the last order! Maybe next time. My favorite thing on that plate was the salad, which is weird because it was just greens with olive oil and I think pink sea salt, but it tasted so good!

The big plan for the rest of the day was shopping! There were tons of stores I wanted to check out in town. First on the list was Fat Fancy, a vintage plus size shop! I've wanted to visit for years. I tried on gold lame hot pants and caftans and sweaters and loved it. I never find vintage in my size, here I had options! And there was a Miss Piggy shrine. Perfection!

After we had paid I noticed a "Large and in charge" Latrice Royale pin, so I had to make another purchase! She is one of my favorite queens! "Funky yet Chunky".

I bought this caftan. And a cute sweater that will make an appearance in another trip post.

This place, Ray's Ragtime, was really close to Fat Fancy so we stopped in. It was packed to the roof (literally!) with vintage clothes! And elf shoes....

Travis ended up with this cute plaid jacket. He was so excited that it was lined. See the dresses hanging on those racks? They went around the entire store! So many!

What followed was hours of walking up and down Mississippi Avenue going in cool shop after cool shop. Here are a few of the things we saw, I didn't take many photos.

Reading Frenzy (zines!!)

Travis got a hair cut. Said he wanted to look good for my photos, hah!

This tea shop and a whole page of different kinds of chai! I picked the black forest, it was ok. I would love to try more of them. And I love that sign. 

Travis told me "That looks kind of seamless!" when I put on this mask, so he took a photo to show me. I guess he was right!

After all that shopping we were starving and went to dinner at the Black Water Bar. A bar will all vegan food?? Don't mind if I do! Like several vegan places we went in Portland, there was no mention of all the food being vegan on the menu, so I double checked the Happy Cow listing. It seemed too good to be true! 

The BEST thing was the mozzarella sticks. They were so good, I don't even understand how they did it. I had a seitan barbeque sandwich that was great, and Travis was in love with his Western burger. I also had a Cock and Bull ginger ale, but it was TOO spicy. While we were eating they were playing the Hobbit on a big screen, with the sound off. We loved it so much we ended up back there again the next night.

Per Rae and Travis vacation tradition we had to see a movie while we were out of town. We picked Goosebumps, it was delightful! There were several laugh out loud moments, though we were disappointed the evil sponge from "It Came From Beneath the Sink" didn't make an appearance.

 

After the movie we headed back to our little farm abode and fell asleep. It was a good day.