blackmons

I'm sorry I never posted a trip report after everyone's great advice. My husband and I celebrated our 30th anniversary in Portland, Oregon, back in June. I just want to thank everyone for all their great advice. Here's a quick rundown of our trip:

We stayed at the Hotel Monaco, which was highly recommended on these boards, and liked it very much. The staff was very friendly, and it was very conveniently located. We arrived on Friday and walked over to “Fenouil” for lunch in the Pearl District. It was a beautiful day so we sat outside and watched the kids playing in Jamison Square. Great food! Fun neighborhood. Then we got our car and visited the Japanese Garden and the International Rose Garden – both were lovely. We dropped off our car back at the hotel and walked over to Powell Books. An amazing place. Then we had dinner at “Kenny & Zook”, a deli nearby.

On Saturday we walked over to the Farmers Market, which was a highlight for me. I love a good farmer’s market, and this is the best I’ve ever seen. After watching a cooking demonstration, gorging on delicious food, listening to music, and people watching we got the car and drove out to the Columbia Gorge. We stopped for coffee at Edgefield, one of the McMenamis properties just because it sounded so quirky I wanted to check it out. We passed up Multnomah Falls because there was no place to pull over, by parked over by Horsetail Falls, where we could sit on rocks with just a few other people and have the falls to ourselves. I’m sure it wasn’t as dramatic, but we enjoyed it. Then we drove on to Hood River where we sat and watched the wind surfers. Very fun. We returned back to Portland on the Washington side of the gorge, and the views of the river and Mt. Hood were just beautiful. We ate dinner that night at “The Farm Café”.

Sunday we drove to Cannon Beach, a beautiful drive. We checked out the tide pools at Haystack Rock – lots of star fish and anemones. They have docents there to answer questions. If you go, make sure you check what time is low tide. We ate lunch at “Lazy Susan,” which we really enjoyed. Then we drove out to Cape Meares, checking out the huge Tillamook Cheese Factory along with way. Great views from the Cape Meares lighthouse. Drove back on 6 – beautiful drive, tons of wildflowers.

It was a great trip!
Thanks again,
Laurie

Scarlett

Hi!
So glad to read that your trip and the anniversary turned out so well !
Glad you liked the Monaco, I love that hotel lol. And Fenouil.. isn't it beautiful ? What did you have ? I always liked sitting over in the far corner , at night it is very romantic ..
I miss Powells so much ! We lived about 2 blocks from there, I could spend hours there just in the Art Book section .. Kenny & Zukes? ( look at www.portlandfood.org ) That is "Zukes" website, foodie forum ..

What a wonderful drive you took !
I love Cannon beach ..
How will you top this on #31 ? lol

spirobulldog

I never posted a report on our Oregon trip either. Sounds like you went and ate at a lot of the places we did. I am not big into root beer, but we sampled a bottle at Kenny & Zukes, then sampled two more. Isn't there selection of drinks amazing. Bulldog Root Beer was our favorite. I googled it when we got home and find it is rated one of the top root beers.

Fodorite018

Thanks for letting us know how it went. You hit a lot of our favorite places I agree, our farmers market is top notch!

Dayenu

Thank you for taking me back to Portland! We've enjoyed it too last year.

Connie

I'm glad you got to see sea life in the Haystack Rock tidepools. When we were there in early August, there were none and the docent said too much people traffic had moved them out.

CAB226

I didn't talk to any docents when I was at Haystack Rock on July 31st, but didn't see anything in the tidepools either and was wondeirng what all the fuss I had heard about how great they were was. Now I know what had happened. Thanks for that info, Connie.