From PHX to PDX, With Love

I just got home from a week-long trip with two of my besties, but my mind isn’t ready to be back yet. The morning after the final day of my summer internship, we packed up Kaylie’s car and drove 12 hours up to Berkeley. Amazingly, we packed San Francisco into one day before taking on another 10 hours in the car and arriving at Kaylie’s sweet new home in Portland.

It was such a happy week, and there’s really too much to pack into a single post. So here are some of my personal highlights.

1. Eating so much delicious food. Of course, we had to get Voodoo Doughnuts, but the real star of the donut show was Blue Star Donuts. I also had the best ice cream of my life at Salt & Straw. We celebrated our final day by getting brunch at my favorite restaurant: Screen Door. Just look at that tower of sweet potato waffles and chicken. I think I need to go on a vegetarian cleanse after all of that.

2. Playing vintage arcade games at Musée Mécanique. Domenico and I visited this arcade when we were in San Francisco in May, and it’s definitely my favorite part of Fisherman’s Wharf.

3. Going to lovely vintage and craft shops. There are just two many to name. Nearly every block, we were ducking into a new boutique or antique store or yarn shop. I brought far too much of it home with me.

4. Enjoying the beauty and perfect quirkiness of Portland. Of course, Oregon is gorgeous and green, especially to an Arizona girl like me. We got to really enjoy the outdoors on a 6-mile hike around Multnomah Falls. The city itself is so unique, too. Just look at those bricks – they’re coated in glitter. Where else but Portland would you see that?

5. Sitting in parks with my cute friends. One of these parks was the Rose Gardens, where we ate a picnic of bread, goat cheese, berries, and cherry tomatoes from the farmer’s market. We also spent one evening at a little lake where we sat on a pier, ate leftover Vietnamese food, talked, took pictures, and went for an impromptu swim. Later, we all decided that simple evening was our favorite part of the trip.